Just a question in relation to breaking up fume sims with procedural maps like noise and the likes. Is there a way of telling what size the noise map is when applying it to say simple source for example? Would anyone here have a knack to knowing how the map sizeis reflected in the source? It's obviously easier if the source is an object as you can see where the map is applied. I hope you understand the question not too sure if i phrased it correctly!

Paul

For object sources, just render it real quick in scanline. For simple sources, you can crank up the density ,and sim / render the first frame to see what pattern the noise is giving you.

Daniel-B

03 March 2011, 10:36 PM

Ok, this is my second attempt at a photoreal Fume FX explosion. It's not quite there yet, but I feel I'm getting close. Maybe one more attempt and I'll have it. Please watch in HD for best quality.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIGChvv2iPg

b1m2x3

03 March 2011, 01:26 AM

Houdini guy here, I just convinced the studio I'm at to get some Fume...

Anyone ever seen error 12290 on your output path browser?

If I create a fumefx container, AND THEN import my fbx files, the output path stays valid. However, if I create any containers after I import the fbx, the paths break as a : is inserted. Then there's no way to fix it, as the text field isn't editable, and the browser doesn't come up.

Any ideas?

circusboy

03 March 2011, 02:05 PM

Never seen such a thing. It kinda resembles is a regional settings issue. Like your seperators (Regional Settings>Formats-Additional Settings) are configured for non-english or some such.
But thats usually a comma (,) issue. And I never had the issue with Fumefx.

So by output paths you mean the sim locations correct?

Burritoh

03 March 2011, 02:15 PM

You can make a new grid, take the retimed cache, copy it into the default of the new grid, wavelet there :)

Thanks!
Somehow, I don't feel stupid for not having thought of that. Maybe I should...

pauldublin

03 March 2011, 02:57 PM

For object sources, just render it real quick in scanline. For simple sources, you can crank up the density ,and sim / render the first frame to see what pattern the noise is giving you.

Thanks Ian, I suppose I'll just have to play around with it a bit more

cheers

pauldublin

03 March 2011, 02:58 PM

Ok, this is my second attempt at a photoreal Fume FX explosion. It's not quite there yet, but I feel I'm getting close. Maybe one more attempt and I'll have it. Please watch in HD for best quality.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIGChvv2iPg

Daniel that looks really nice. Great detail going on! How long was the sim/render?

joconnell

03 March 2011, 04:30 PM

Ok, this is my second attempt at a photoreal Fume FX explosion. It's not quite there yet, but I feel I'm getting close. Maybe one more attempt and I'll have it. Please watch in HD for best quality.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIGChvv2iPg

Looking great alright. Oddly I don't like the small trails getting fired out, I think they're a bit too thick or continuous and make the explosion look smaller than it is. The main part is fantastic though. The size, timing and detail is great.

Burritoh

03 March 2011, 06:07 PM

Hristo mentioned that we can use our retimed data as the Default cache for a new sim box.

Can this be used to optimize the retimed cache to exclude un-necessary channels? I know I need all the channels to do retiming, but once it's done, can I not optimize the resulting cache this way?

adom86

03 March 2011, 06:51 PM

Hristo mentioned that we can use our retimed data as the Default cache for a new sim box.

Can this be used to optimize the retimed cache to exclude un-necessary channels? I know I need all the channels to do retiming, but once it's done, can I not optimize the resulting cache this way?

Yes... post cache is a lot smaller file size :D

amckay

03 March 2011, 07:33 PM

Post Processing is very useful even if you're not retiming just using it to exclude channels.
We've gotten file sizes down to 1% of their original file size this way, which means it will load quicker (over the network etc) and render quicker too. Overall it's a pretty necessary step. You can blast all your old data away if you're not planning to resim, and have a nice 100mb cache directory rather than 10gb.

Lastly, I wrote this last night, I wrote a much more comprehensive script but butchered it down to this lite version for the time being. I'll plug all the other stuff into it later when I'm out of crunch mode.

Basically this will do what I think I had a script out months ago does, but allows you to checkbox what you want. So I can check I want it to do a sim, PP it and then render it. No wavelet, etc. So just a bit more practical for production. Like I said there's more intentions behind this but I just didn't have time to fix a few issues so I decided to blast the other stuff for the time being until I have time again.

Burritoh

03 March 2011, 07:59 PM

Thanks Allan!

We just bought your 2.1 training from FumeFXTraining.com. Can't wait to dig in. Lots of subtleties in 2.x still elude me...

Currently, we're doing an effect on probably 40-50 shots that occupies a majority of the frame, is smoke-only, and behaves "unnaturally." Needless to say, cache optimization is a must, and I'm happy to learn all I can!

In fact, I have a question about which route I should take on this project. We like a certain look but have to slow it down by a factor of 0.1. On one hand, this means we don't have to sim out as many initial frames if we do the standard Default>Wavelet>Retime>Optimize. However, since Hristo showed me how to use a second sim box with the WT as the default, I wonder if I should rethink my steps and go with Default>Retime(in new Box)>Wavelet>Optimize. This latter method would give me more control (I think) over exactly how many frames I'm operating at any given step.

Either way, I'm psyching myself up to have to manage 4 passes and 2 sim boxes for each unique element in each shot. Reusing what I can, but still.

xplodeworkshop

03 March 2011, 08:02 PM

pixel magic...

hi,,,, this is awesome............... even i m working on a photoreal explosion.............. i have done simulation parts of explosion,,, but always i get miss the shader part... so can u please send me the fire agt....... from which i can learn more...... because i need some black.. and yellow part.. which u showed....

thx

b1m2x3

03 March 2011, 10:32 PM

Never seen such a thing. It kinda resembles is a regional settings issue. Like your seperators (Regional Settings>Formats-Additional Settings) are configured for non-english or some such.
But thats usually a comma (,) issue. And I never had the issue with Fumefx.

So by output paths you mean the sim locations correct?

yep, sim output location.

This hasn't been happening today on 2.1b. - So I'm assuming it's a 2.1a bug. :)

FlorinMocanu

04 April 2011, 12:52 PM

Hey guys,

I took my last explosion and i re-comped it with a better backplate and i switched from AE to Nuke. It was more of an exercise about integration/learning nuke. I hope you like it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55Mo_7rjudE

b1m2x3

04 April 2011, 04:55 PM

On a completely different note here...I'm now having an issue where loading in Wavelet data does not update my grid size, and when rendered, it looks the same as the Default. The file sets are unique, but it's almost like my Wavelet cache is reading like it's a Default cache. I'm having to resim at double-res to get my detail because of this.

Anyone else experience this?

(fume 2.1b)

did anyone ever find a solution to this? It's happening quite often to me, and I don't want to resim...
instead of mine reading in the default sim, it outputs an 8x8x8 grid...

Aboubakr

04 April 2011, 05:42 PM

did anyone ever find a solution to this? It's happening quite often to me, and I don't want to resim...
instead of mine reading in the default sim, it outputs an 8x8x8 grid...

Yep, that's all set up correctly.
I've pretty much given up on saving this sim - resimming without changing any settings is allowing me to wavelet... so I'm just gonna do that. :-(

Aboubakr

04 April 2011, 09:30 PM

Yep, that's all set up correctly.
I've pretty much given up on saving this sim - resimming without changing any settings is allowing me to wavelet... so I'm just gonna do that. :-(

can u send me ur scene ?

Tollman

04 April 2011, 08:34 AM

Hi,

back to wavelet problem

I made other tests with the wavelet and I have something strange when I do the wavelet simulation.
here is a pic of the same frame to have a better view
is it normal to have this big difference between the simulations ?

what I did is :

- simulate my default sim (I used simulations steps because of fast object mouvement)
there is no simulation setps in wavelet mode, is it normal ?

- simulate wavelet sim (with the default settings in the wavelet tab)

thx

http://www.digitaledge.be/tmp/fumeFxWavelet.jpg

was this ever resolved?
I have the same problem right now, with my default sim making a nice even trail from a fast moving emitter, but the wavelet creates a very blobby look, with no simulation steps (or so it seems)

Pan3sar

04 April 2011, 01:32 PM

Hi, I'm pretty new to FumeFX, but I was wondering if anyone could give me tips on how to create this back fire effect, I tried using a super Spray for a short burst of time, but it giving me a flamethrower effect, rather than the one in the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDQJk5uHQ00

Cheers

Edit - here is what i am getting, not sure why the particles are all bunched up like this.
http://i448.photobucket.com/albums/qq202/panesar/Untitled-2.jpg

circusboy

04 April 2011, 01:53 PM

you might want to play with:
1) life of the particles-you may want to kill them more quickly.
2) The burn rate-higher values will burn the flame more quickly -like your ref.
3) You may also want to play with the radial size around each particle in your particle source object.

b1m2x3

04 April 2011, 02:21 PM

can u send me ur scene ?

unfortunately I can't... it's for production.

And if I did, it would probably work. All I did was re-open the file and re-sim, then the wavelet worked. I checked the files, same size, both have the same chans, but one works with wavelet and one doesn't.

tool2heal

04 April 2011, 11:51 PM

Hi, I'm pretty new to FumeFX, but I was wondering if anyone could give me tips on how to create this back fire effect, I tried using a super Spray for a short burst of time, but it giving me a flamethrower effect, rather than the one in the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDQJk5uHQ00

Cheers

Edit - here is what i am getting, not sure why the particles are all bunched up like this.
http://i448.photobucket.com/albums/qq202/panesar/Untitled-2.jpg

Here's a quick setup i threw together in 10min using pflow.
Particles are birthed and die in 1 frame. turbulence, make sure pipe is a collision inside fume.
mess with the fire AFC so it doesn't fade out high burn rate. no smoke. large enough particle radius so the individual particles don't show. This should get you on the right track.
Scene files for max2010 and max2011. :)

you might want to play with:
1) life of the particles-you may want to kill them more quickly.
2) The burn rate-higher values will burn the flame more quickly -like your ref.
3) You may also want to play with the radial size around each particle in your particle source object.

Thank you man, your tips got me closer to a solution.

Here's a quick setup i threw together in 10min using pflow.
Particles are birthed and die in 1 frame. turbulence, make sure pipe is a collision inside fume.
mess with the fire AFC so it doesn't fade out high burn rate. no smoke. large enough particle radius so the individual particles don't show. This should get you on the right track.
Scene files for max2010 and max2011. :)

Looks great as it moves and the maelstorm motion.
cool as thin smoke and might work as thick too :cool:

bariscan90

04 April 2011, 03:27 PM

Looks great as it moves and the maelstorm motion.
cool as thin smoke and might work as thick too :cool:

Thank you,it is good have comments :)

Yes,it has a dusty form,dusty smoke :)

kogden

04 April 2011, 01:36 PM

Hey,

Well I thought I would share the update to my website and demo reel....

Go hard peeps!

www.kobfx.com

Cheers Kieran

@bariscan90 Nice Sim and Render!

@Pan3sar Maybe try something simpler? like an atmospheric gizmo :argh:.... Maybe you could layer that with some FFX smoke to make it look "prettier" :)

I know the below effect was done with that :)
http://www.youtube.com/user/firemintgames#p/u/4/U1IO06Nfn-Y

FlorinMocanu

04 April 2011, 01:52 PM

Really nice reel, congrats ;)

Anesthaesia

04 April 2011, 02:25 PM

Hi All,

I have been trying to achive the Default->Post->Wavelet sim 'trick' but it seems the new grid actually loads both the PP and original default sims when I render. I am running 2.0a, so I hope this is not the problem

At this point the default Sim definitely plays back in the preview window as the retimed Sim, however when I render it renders the original Default sim (can easily see this due to the sim being too far along for the retimed effect)

Same happens if I run a wavelet on (3.) and render that

Any tips on achieving this would be great.

Cheers,
D

circusboy

04 April 2011, 02:44 PM

Whats your cache display set to? To display and render Wavelet it needs to be set to display 'Wavelet' (upper right combo box).

Anesthaesia

04 April 2011, 03:04 PM

Sim mode and cache are both set correctly

If I load the retimed frames as default cache, leave cache at default, preview plays fine. When I render however, I see the original frames (non-retimed)

Whats your cache display set to? To display and render Wavelet it needs to be
set to display 'Wavelet' (upper right combo box).

circusboy

04 April 2011, 03:33 PM

I confess my own testing was is a different order, Default, Wavelett and finally Post.
Its seemed to work for me. But you are not the only one reporting strange behavior (caches display like default). I don't think anyone has reported a cause/workaround yet except carefully resimming everything.

Anesthaesia

04 April 2011, 04:22 PM

This is where I turn bright red and shove my head up my @rse...

Everything is working fine - the reason it appeared to not be working is I did not hide the original grid, so this was being rendered over the top of the retimed grid and hiding it...making it appear like the wavelet didn't exist :argh:

hi guys i have made one nuclear explosion,, but i have made this is in production.. so i couldnt upload in high quality.. so i have shoot from mobile...
pls see and comments..
thx

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvLPJiuJpyo&feature=player_embedded

PartiallyFrozen

04 April 2011, 06:45 PM

hi guys i have made one nuclear explosion,, but i have made this is in production.. so i couldnt upload in high quality.. so i have shoot from mobile...
pls see and comments..
thx

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvLPJiuJpyo&feature=player_embedded

I hope there was a miscommunication. Don't ever, ever video tape your screen while in a studio. Even if it is for RnD and the work wont be used in the production you are working on. That is a REALLY bad idea. It might not be a big deal at the studio you are at, but recording the screen with your phone and putting it up on here is a massively massively bad idea. If you get permission from the studio you are at then its A OK but if not. Don't do it again. Seriously.

Glacierise

04 April 2011, 07:03 PM

The man speaks wise, listen up :)

Otherwise - too fast for nuclear, but otherwise nice motion. Could use some more resolution though :) Keep it up :bounce:

b1m2x3

04 April 2011, 04:14 AM

Anyone ever get parallel black boxes when rendering duplicated overlapping smoke containers?
If i have 3 containers overlapping, it cuts out a big rectangular piece of the middle one... it even removes it's alpha. Any ideas?

edit: nevermind, autovolume wasn't on....

circusboy

04 April 2011, 09:49 PM

We've hit a render crash that seems to be related to multiscattering. i.e. if its 'on' it will crash *certain frames* on *certain fumeboxes*. But not all.
But crashes the same frames every time if its occuring (on multiple machines). Uncheck multiscatter and no crash. Often occurs when the renderer (scanline) has the draw the fume for the first time-but not always. I had it conk out only for ten frames mid sequence as well (all frames around those ten render fine). And nothing unusual occurs specific to those frames as best I can tell.

I never saw this with version 1.0 of fumefx (over years of use).
But I can repro in 2.1a in both max 2009 and 2011 with the same scene.
Seems to be a fairly common occurrance as multiple users here have had this issue with completely unique fx (i.e. All built from scratch-not shared).

I tried replacing the lights and rebuilding the fume box but no joy. Only choice seems to be not to use multiple scattering...

PartiallyFrozen

04 April 2011, 06:08 PM

We've hit a render crash that seems to be related to multiscattering. i.e. if its 'on' it will crash *certain frames* on *certain fumeboxes*. But not all.
But crashes the same frames every time if its occuring (on multiple machines). Uncheck multiscatter and no crash. Often occurs when the renderer (scanline) has the draw the fume for the first time-but not always. I had it conk out only for ten frames mid sequence as well (all frames around those ten render fine). And nothing unusual occurs specific to those frames as best I can tell.

I never saw this with version 1.0 of fumefx (over years of use).
But I can repro in 2.1a in both max 2009 and 2011 with the same scene.
Seems to be a fairly common occurrance as multiple users here have had this issue with completely unique fx (i.e. All built from scratch-not shared).

I tried replacing the lights and rebuilding the fume box but no joy. Only choice seems to be not to use multiple scattering...

Have you looked into if the machines its crashing on have less ram? It could just be running out of ram. My initial thought. I know multiple scattering taxes the systems a bit more.

circusboy

04 April 2011, 06:27 PM

Seems to happen on any of our machines (when it shows up) with various levels af ram and processors. Mines got 12 GB-I don't think we have any with more than that. Like I said it didn't seem to happen in Fume fx generation 1.0 (where I've done shots where multi scattering was quite important).
In the show i had the issue it wasn't so crucial to the look-so i could get away without it.
But it seemed to be the only workaround.

Dusmus

04 April 2011, 11:01 PM

Hey guys,

Guess I should share this, I've been doing some research on black flames for a video clip.
Based on A. McKay's fire so not so much credit heh :rolleyes:

http://vimeo.com/21821458

Cheers

nidas

04 April 2011, 12:35 PM

We've hit a render crash that seems to be related to multiscattering. i.e. if its 'on' it will crash *certain frames* on *certain fumeboxes*. But not all.
But crashes the same frames every time if its occuring (on multiple machines). Uncheck multiscatter and no crash. Often occurs when the renderer (scanline) has the draw the fume for the first time-but not always. I had it conk out only for ten frames mid sequence as well (all frames around those ten render fine). And nothing unusual occurs specific to those frames as best I can tell.

I never saw this with version 1.0 of fumefx (over years of use).
But I can repro in 2.1a in both max 2009 and 2011 with the same scene.
Seems to be a fairly common occurrance as multiple users here have had this issue with completely unique fx (i.e. All built from scratch-not shared).

I tried replacing the lights and rebuilding the fume box but no joy. Only choice seems to be not to use multiple scattering...

Have you tried lowering the "Maximum depth" in the multi scatter ? Iīve had som problems and lowering the depth in huge simulations could fix the problem...

It was a long time ago I had these problems and I donīt think I ever had them with 2.1....

Cheers

circusboy

04 April 2011, 12:55 PM

No I didn't but they were at the default. The issue seemed circumstantial-but not related to size and rez. i.e. i saw it with some fairly small mid-rez effects as well.

Thanks for the input-something to try at least.

Ardak2

04 April 2011, 04:49 PM

Hello everybody, and sorry if this question has been previously addressed. The question I am asking is that how I can make the source object invisible? The hide object is not what im looking for, the thing I am looking for is that the fluid simulation could originate from the given shape (using object source) but as time goes on it wouldn't be dependable on the source, it would be changing form, so in the word, simulating fluid more than soft body. A good example for this is, how I could make the object behave like a cloud? Thanks.

And another thing. How can I make the cloud span larger area faster, without spreading too much upwards. Spreading with lesser gravity. Thanks.

And third thing. How I can make the smoke consist of larger features, like clouds? And to not have that much those smaller details.

renaissance01

04 April 2011, 12:33 AM

Hello everybody, and sorry if this question has been previously addressed. The question I am asking is that how I can make the source object invisible? The hide object is not what im looking for, the thing I am looking for is that the fluid simulation could originate from the given shape (using object source) but as time goes on it wouldn't be dependable on the source, it would be changing form, so in the word, simulating fluid more than soft body. A good example for this is, how I could make the object behave like a cloud? Thanks.

And another thing. How can I make the cloud span larger area faster, without spreading too much upwards. Spreading with lesser gravity. Thanks.

And third thing. How I can make the smoke consist of larger features, like clouds? And to not have that much those smaller details.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by wanting the object invisible but not hidden? You mentioned clouds so I assume you mean you want to emit from an object to get an initial shape but hide the shape? I wouldn't recommend making static clouds with Fume; try using Afterburn, you will get the artistic result you want quicker without having to sim.

Ardak2

04 April 2011, 01:13 PM

I apologize for my terrible description, that was what I ment. To get an shape from the object, as the simulation goes on, it wouldn't be dependant on the original shape. Like a cloud which could transform freely.

joconnell

04 April 2011, 04:16 PM

Try free flow in your fume source - Smoke / fire will emit from the object but won't be affected by the actual surface itself.

Burritoh

04 April 2011, 04:35 PM

I'm going crazy on this one. It has to be something stupid that I'm overlooking...

I've got a sim that is refusing to render its alpha channel. I can ramp the opacity up, and I can increase the illumination multiplier, but I get nothing in my alpha channel. It's just black.

UPDATE:
It must have been something in the scene. I rebuilt the scene from scratch and everything is fine... weirdness...

Matroskin13

04 April 2011, 07:01 AM

Hi guys
I saw video about still smoke became a vortex. It was done using Fumefx.
I decided to make the same and faced the problem - how to make vortex?

Burritoh

04 April 2011, 12:55 PM

Hi guys
I saw video about still smoke became a vortex. It was done using Fumefx.
I decided to make the same and faced the problem - how to make vortex?

You can add a vortex Space Warp to the scene, and then add it into the FumeFX sim (in the same list where you add the Fume source)

Matroskin13

04 April 2011, 05:33 AM

You can add a vortex Space Warp to the scene, and then add it into the FumeFX sim (in the same list where you add the Fume source)
Thanks for reply
But there is no Vortex in Space Warps list (3ds max 2009 design)

Matroskin13

04 April 2011, 06:44 AM

I didn't manage to find Vortex in a list.
upd: Sorry, I've found Votex :)
So, I'll try in this way, thans

ddustin

04 April 2011, 08:00 PM

We are using a PFlow source to generate Fume Smoke, but the fume smoke will not inherit the motion from the particles (the PFLOW source is moving).
Is there a way to use PFLOW generated smoke to do anything except hang in the air?
We have tried using wind but it hasnt worked too well.

Thanks,
David

tool2heal

04 April 2011, 02:07 AM

Under your fumefx particle source setting there is 'velocity multiplier' with this set to zero the smoke moves at the same rate of the particle speed, 1 faster, -1 slower.

Burritoh

04 April 2011, 02:30 PM

Ah sorry! I'm using 2011... Here's what the options are in 2011 by default:

http://timcrowson.smugmug.com/photos/i-Zzxt3R3/0/O/i-Zzxt3R3.jpg

Burritoh

04 April 2011, 06:47 PM

I just sent a support email to Afterworks, but it appears that we're getting the old Stuttering Smoke problem with 2.1b. Is anyone else?

My understanding was that the stuttering in 2.1a was originally caused by the DPFLICS license server. 2.1b replaced it with AFLICS and the problem was gone. Now all of a sudden it's back...

FlorinMocanu

05 May 2011, 01:42 PM

Latest explosion i am making, it's a WIP at the moment, a lot of elements are missing from it, it's just the fireball. Still, i would love some feedback on it :).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1apVS92hME

I'm trying to get this kind of look to it, though i don't think i have the PC to get that type of detail...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/seaweasel/1392539662/

CC is welcome :)

tool2heal

05 May 2011, 04:13 PM

I would say the fire element itself looks nice, but it's way to close to the camera. makes it look small. the speed/slowness is of a large explosion, but it being so close. doesn't make sense, scale wise.

If that little guy in the corner is supposed to indicate ur scale, then ur explosion is roughly 200 feet high? at it's peak. yet the rock formation there only looks roughly like 40 feet tall.

Getting that look ur going for in the picture is going to involve keeping your source on. (dont animate the fuel and temperature to 0) fast upward rising temperature is whats going to cause your fireball to rotate upon itself like a nuke. Most of the time honestly when I'm aiming
for an explosion like that, I disable the smoke in the source and just turn on 'smoke from fuel'
in the sim tab and crank it up to like 10-15. and then the smoke density in the render tab to around 5.

I might have a scene to contribute if anyone wants to check out my usual explosion setup.
I tend to use object sources, and/or particle sources, they may take longer to sim, but they give way more control over the final shape/motion.

stephenl

05 May 2011, 05:56 PM

Florin-to get to the reference image I would make the last few flames lighter (and more yellow) and to get the reference image I would turn burn rate down and variation down

Also what tool said is true the camera is a little too close and I would turn the gravity up becuase the smoke raises kinda fast

That would have to be a pretty.. wide bomb lol explosions usually happen smaller then expand, yours kinda happens huge at once- Nice render though

FlorinMocanu

05 May 2011, 07:54 PM

Hi there,

Thanks for your input, greatly apreciate it :). I will definitely take it into account.

About the background, it's just one photo with the guy and the rock.... I didn't use 2 photos, the scale looks just how you see it..

Tool, i would really apreciate if you could share a scene, just to observe another way of working, this one uses particles.

Cheers,
Florin

tool2heal

05 May 2011, 10:14 PM

Alright, here's 5 different setups I have used. A couple were used in this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqeX2EegAHk

Remember that these are basically just starting points, a lot of different looks can be done with these, not just what's in the video.

Setup 1: This is basically a nuke setup. Take one sphere, setup some displace on it with a noise map, cut it in half. animate it growing and shrinking over 10 frames. adjust the pivot so you can shift rotate to clone a basic circle, snap angle to get however many other spheres you want. make sure u select them all and reset their pivots to center after cloning them.
You can toss them all in to one single object source , or use them as individual object sources.
(this is roughly the setup used in the last explosion in the video)

Setup 2: this setup might not look complicated, which it isn't, but it works great. take a simple source. clone it in the same manner as setup one, by adjusting the pivot to center grid. Best option is to adjust ur first source to the settings you want, then clone the rest. Use a high velocity with this setup so they all shoot inward. Notice the circle shape I have them all linked to. this allows you to grow/shrink the explosion at will, animating it works great. have some fun playing with this setup, it's a fun one. :)

Setup 3: This is complicated to explain, but basically it works on the concept i explained in the earlier post about temperature allowing your fireball to roll. I have had it working well, but its tough to get the temperature velocity and bouyancies equaled out. high temperature is being forced upwards through the center of the explosion. the sphere is just a birth object, its not involved in the sim. when using particles for sources I sometimes tend to split them up into fuel particles, and temp particles. two different particle flows. this allows you to emit fuel/temperature prematurely somewhat like a fuel/air bomb.

Setup 4: not much explaining to do here, same concept as setup one, but just uses a cylinder as the source. rapidly grow/shrink over 5-10 frames. be sure that ur expansion is high enough to grow larger then the source itself. or ur just gonna get a flat shape.
(this is the setup used in the 3rd and 4th explosion in the video, the rest of them were either done with setup 1 or a similar setup but using only one sphere)

Setup 5: This is something I have been playing with recently. a regular particle system type explosion setup. Except that the particle speed is turned wayyyy up. 2000 in this scene. If you look closely, this is actually producing that very faint initial shockwave you see in a lot of explosions, that almost air disturbance effect. its the smoke, it seems to produce before the actual explosion. turn up the speed even more, another 1000 or so, and the explosion produces initial streamers like flying debris. all with one source.

I always have a ground for them to collide with, and I always have the bottom of the grid laying under the plane take a look from side view and see what i mean. also, when using half sphere's I always make them edit poly and delete the bottom half, I don't use the 'hemisphere' option.

So have fun checking these out.
If anyone has any questions, just ask.

Edit: download file fixed, sorry bout that.

Matroskin13

05 May 2011, 05:30 AM

You can add a vortex Space Warp to the scene, and then add it into the FumeFX sim (in the same list where you add the Fume source)
Still have some problems.
It takes much time to simulate vortex+fume, so if I change one of the parametrs in vortex propertiesI have to wait for a long time as simulation finishes up.
So I decided to use particles (pflow) to setup vortex first. But the problem is - vortex acts in different ways on partiles and Fumefx.

tool2heal

05 May 2011, 05:34 AM

Apply the vortex just to your particles, don't put the vortex space warp into the fumefx objects list. When forces are added to the objects list inside of fumefx it takes a long time to simulate.

Matroskin13

05 May 2011, 05:59 AM

Apply the vortex just to your particles, don't put the vortex space warp into the fumefx objects list. When forces are added to the objects list inside of fumefx it takes a long time to simulate.
Yep, I applied vortex for particles only and setup it. I thought to apply the same setup for Fumefx, but vortex acts on ffx in a different way

Burritoh

05 May 2011, 03:50 PM

To follow up on my earlier post about stuttering smoke, here's a video (http://www.dynamiclens.com/Downloads/fume/movies/Stutter2.mov) of what I'm seeing. This is with Fume 2.1b, in Max 2011 64bit.

I've sent the scene file and movie to Afterworks support, but if anyone wants to look at it, be my guest. You can download the scene here. (http://www.dynamiclens.com/Downloads/fume/Stutter2.zip)

I really don't understand what's happening. At every step of the way, I make sure I'm including all the channels, especially velocity and temp. The stuttering shows up once the Retiming stage is done. It shows up not only in the final render, but in the Preview Render as well.

I've been creating high-res sims methodically in this same manner for several weeks on the same machine, and now suddenly this happens. With 2.1b, retiming was finally reliable. Now I'm dead in the water on very active project.

I can always try a reinstallation...

kogden

05 May 2011, 09:17 AM

I've sent the scene file and movie to Afterworks support, but if anyone wants to look at it, be my guest. You can download the scene here. (http://forums.cgsociety.org/#)

Firstly your link doesn't seem to go anywhere.... and secondly can you post a screen shot of you simulation tab in the fumefx dialog ?

:)

Matroskin13

05 May 2011, 02:59 PM

How can I make smoke distribution uniform (not only upwards)?

circusboy

05 May 2011, 03:26 PM

To follow up on my earlier post about stuttering smoke, here's a video (http://www.dynamiclens.com/Downloads/fume/movies/Stutter2.mov) of what I'm seeing. This is with Fume 2.1b, in Max 2011 64bit.

I've sent the scene file and movie to Afterworks support, but if anyone wants to look at it, be my guest. You can download the scene here. (http://forums.cgsociety.org/#)

I really don't understand what's happening. At every step of the way, I make sure I'm including all the channels, especially velocity and temp. The stuttering shows up once the Retiming stage is done. It shows up not only in the final render, but in the Preview Render as well.

I've been creating high-res sims methodically in this same manner for several weeks on the same machine, and now suddenly this happens. With 2.1b, retiming was finally reliable. Now I'm dead in the water on very active project.

I can always try a reinstallation...
I can't remember if you are trying to make the effect faster or slower. But I had to do one faster (1.5) yesturday. I did everything you did-but I also had Adjust Playback Range 'on'.
Anyway that result worked fine for me that time.

in case it helps.

PexElroy

05 May 2011, 02:01 AM

To follow up on my earlier post about stuttering smoke, here's a video (http://www.dynamiclens.com/Downloads/fume/movies/Stutter2.mov) of what I'm seeing. This is with Fume 2.1b, in Max 2011 64bit
Seen this before in 2.1a also. Can't get your file to look at, but are you using any keyframes on the PP re-time, or the Sim tab Time Scale? If so try without, and try to shiift your Sim tab Time Scale value, as it might help.

Burritoh

05 May 2011, 05:37 PM

Sorry guys, I fixed the download link.

Here it is again (http://www.dynamiclens.com/Downloads/fume/Stutter2.zip)

I haven't heard anything from Kresimir at all. I hope he's just really busy. I've moved on to other shots that don't require retiming until we get this resolved.

Please download the file and take a look at the settings, and watch the render too. It's wacky.

b1m2x3

05 May 2011, 10:48 PM

does anyone know how to continue/resume a simulation over backburner? The docs say it's not possible, but has anyone played around with the idea via maxscript?

I'm currently having a ton of issues with backburner - it will randomly stop the sim mid-job, mark the job as an error, and disconnect the machine from the backburner farm.

circusboy

05 May 2011, 02:58 PM

Nope it doesn't which is sad.
One thing you could try (I haven't) is load the last good frame and set is as an initial state and make sure you set your sim for frames after it and try BB while being Initial State mode.

But BB with sims usually work fine *if* the machines on the farm are up to the job (no 32 bits with pidly ram). *And* your network and servers are behaving themselves.

3DMasta

05 May 2011, 04:42 AM

Hello guys! I stuck with a problem with FFX and would like to ask for your help. Recently i dicided to render animation of Torus in fire which is coming with installation of ffx in Examples folder to test some new features of ffx 2. I tweaked some settings to achieve good looking fluid and simulated. Finally when it came to rendering i decided to optimize caches with post process to speed things up. I exported Smoke, Fire and Tex (in order to prevent fluid mapping details ) channels along with Minimize on, but when i rendered a frame from that Post cache, there was no fluid map ditails in it. Renders from Default cache are fully detailed though. After some research i found out that fluid mapping details were present in the very beginning but vanish gradually as animation proceed. Did someone encounter similar problem? Maybe i do something wrong? Any help on this would be greatly appreciated!

Hi everybody! I'm back with the same problem. I can't get fluid mapping to work in post cache! :cry: I rebuilt ffx container and resim'd everything, exported ALL channels in the post processing, but again no trace of the texture in rendering! I just want to find out what's the deal :curious:

circusboy

05 May 2011, 12:48 PM

Did you sim with wavelet on instead of fluid mapping extra detail?
I think wavelet and fluid mapping should be combineable but they cannot be in the current design. Its as shame really-I liken it to having subdivision surfaces support but not being able to texture map them!:cry:
Other than that I don't know-I think its working for me.

Maybe try loading the post cache on a copy of your fume box as a default cache and applying the fluid mapping there?

Junaidishtar

05 May 2011, 11:30 PM

i have just installed fume 2.1c and this one also flickers. i thought version c is going to be fixed. i tried using mental ray but the renders looks flat, less details and quite diffused; while default scanline renders in depth, good detailed shadows and a lot of detail but it flickers. does anyone know which version is being used in most of the production these days and how to fix this flickering problem or if we cant then how to get same scanline details with mental ray.

Here are 2 videos I've been working on during my free time. There's some fume and TP in it :)

http://vimeo.com/23652082
and
http://vimeo.com/23653993

I hope you like it!
Nahuel

Matroskin13

05 May 2011, 01:07 PM

Hi guys
I tried to make galaxy (tornado) using pfow+ffx, but the result is not so good - smoke is static
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCtELFk5eIs
Also I tride to use vortex force and ffx and I didnt satisfied with the result too.

Anyway.. I'd like to make something like this:
http://vimeo.com/1276601

CC is welcome :).
I like it. I'd say black maybe dominates the smoke a bit too much-more of the desert brown like some of your other tests.

circusboy

05 May 2011, 01:46 PM

Hi guys
I tried to make galaxy (tornado) using pfow+ffx, but the result is not so good - smoke is static
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCtELFk5eIs
Also I tride to use vortex force and ffx and I didnt satisfied with the result too.

Anyway.. I'd like to make something like this:
http://vimeo.com/1276601

Can anybody advice me a way or a tutorial how to do this.
I rather helpful fellow has a demo scene you should look at-probably a better starting point than even your reference (which falls apart near the end).
http://www.divisionof8.com/archives/portfolio/fumefx-tests

Lots of helpful stuff here.

Matroskin13

05 May 2011, 02:12 PM

I rather helpful fellow has a demo scene you should look at-probably a better starting point than even your reference (which falls apart near the end).
http://www.divisionof8.com/archives/portfolio/fumefx-tests

Lots of helpful stuff here.
Yep, that's would be nice, but it's not possible to download scene - the link is dead :(

3DMasta

05 May 2011, 05:58 PM

Did you sim with wavelet on instead of fluid mapping extra detail?
I think wavelet and fluid mapping should be combineable but they cannot be in the current design. Its as shame really-I liken it to having subdivision surfaces support but not being able to texture map them!:cry:
Other than that I don't know-I think its working for me.

Maybe try loading the post cache on a copy of your fume box as a default cache and applying the fluid mapping there?

Hi! I did as you proposed (loaded post cache as default on the copy of the ffx grid), but it didn't help :( I give up! I just don't get it! Did anyone encounter the same problem? Maybe there is some kind of workaround? I'd appreciate any help! Thanks!

circusboy

05 May 2011, 06:14 PM

Yep, that's would be nice, but it's not possible to download scene - the link is dead :(
Contact Joel via that site (and he sometimes appears here) that web site is new-maybe the link somehow didn't make it from his old one.

circusboy

05 May 2011, 06:17 PM

Hi! I did as you proposed (loaded post cache as default on the copy of the ffx grid), but it didn't help :( I give up! I just don't get it! Did anyone encounter the same problem? Maybe there is some kind of workaround? I'd appreciate any help! Thanks!
Does the fluid map truely work before the PP?
I'd probably have to see a scene...

3DMasta

05 May 2011, 11:15 PM

Does the fluid map truely work before the PP?
I'd probably have to see a scene...

Contact Joel via that site (and he sometimes appears here) that web site is new-maybe the link somehow didn't make it from his old one.
Done it, he uploaded file again, thanks!

Ponomarev

05 May 2011, 09:22 AM

Hi there! http://afterworks.com/BBdx4/images/smilies/zmik.png
I have one hardcore scene, done with FumeFX 2.1c and I have five (or more) very powerfull machines...Is there any solution to simulate my scene on this farm, using FFX?
I know, that FFX allow to submit one sim job on the one machine using Backburner mode and FFX SL...
One my coworker told me, that he can run FFX sim on one computer, which added resources of others computers to own resources and all works fine usinf Backburner and FFX SL....is it joke???
I understand, that, logically, I can't simulate some frames on the farm, couse each frame simulated one by one, step by step! BUT!!! When ALL farm simulate ONE frame....it's sounds good )))

Regards

Vasiliy

joconnell

05 May 2011, 10:16 AM

Not so far unfortunately - since each frame is based on the frame before it's not possible to simulate multiple frames at the same time in the way you can render. Also since each voxel in the grid is based around all of the other data around it it might be a bit complicated to sync up all the machines - unfortunately you're stuck with trying out different parameters for sims on each machine rather than splitting it up.

circusboy

05 May 2011, 01:47 PM

Not so far unfortunately - since each frame is based on the frame before it's not possible to simulate multiple frames at the same time in the way you can render. Also since each voxel in the grid is based around all of the other data around it it might be a bit complicated to sync up all the machines - unfortunately you're stuck with trying out different parameters for sims on each machine rather than splitting it up.
It helps if your farm machines have lots of processors and ram-so at least they sim as fast as they can. Also if you have multiple unrelated fx per shot (so unique caches) you can submit
an fx sim each to an alotted machine and at least multi task this way.

@3DMasta I'll see what your scene does for me.

circusboy

05 May 2011, 02:49 PM

@3DMasta I'll see what your scene does for me.
Alright checked it in 2011/Fumefx 2.1c. It works for me-however what kind of post process are you doing wavelette? or retime? It will work for retimes only (as i was saying before). Its unfortunetly by design at the moment.

Anyway my tests did a retime of 1.5 of your scene (making it faster).

Couple of things I saw with your scene:
1) Your Fumefx preferences output paths are all over the place-this is the main culprit I suspect. I always output all three paths to the exact same location and check the 'Auto Synchronize Paths' too just to be safe.

2) Before I could perform the retime without error I had to re-cache with the Temperature channel exported too (you had everything else).

So for me it works as expected.

mclawest

05 May 2011, 04:28 PM

To follow up on my earlier post about stuttering smoke, here's a video (http://www.dynamiclens.com/Downloads/fume/movies/Stutter2.mov) of what I'm seeing. This is with Fume 2.1b, in Max 2011 64bit.

I've sent the scene file and movie to Afterworks support, but if anyone wants to look at it, be my guest. You can download the scene here. (http://www.dynamiclens.com/Downloads/fume/Stutter2.zip)

I really don't understand what's happening. At every step of the way, I make sure I'm including all the channels, especially velocity and temp. The stuttering shows up once the Retiming stage is done. It shows up not only in the final render, but in the Preview Render as well.

I've been creating high-res sims methodically in this same manner for several weeks on the same machine, and now suddenly this happens. With 2.1b, retiming was finally reliable. Now I'm dead in the water on very active project.

I can always try a reinstallation...

looks like it was pretty hard retimed, I can say from 100% to 0.1.. I'll download your scene alittle bit later, but it is my first thought.

Forgottenhero3

05 May 2011, 10:01 PM

hi guys i did use fume for a space scene, you can have a look at it here:

The uncompressed clip looks way cooler on a big screen, anyway tell me what you think :)

http://img30.imageshack.us/img30/9642/starsp.jpg

i would love a break down of how he might of made this, or even a link to a tutorial that might explain how to do something this epic, thanks :)

I know the basics of particle flow but im finding it hard to get my head around fumefx

olipoli1

05 May 2011, 02:18 PM

Hi guys

Long time I havent been around here.

I have compiled a little reel from some of my fx work and some research stuff. It has lots of fume but also pflow box 2 and real flow.

Please let me know what you think!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvHJRvnsxVg

cheers

3DMasta

05 May 2011, 04:50 PM

Alright checked it in 2011/Fumefx 2.1c. It works for me-however what kind of post process are you doing wavelette? or retime? It will work for retimes only (as i was saying before). Its unfortunetly by design at the moment.

Anyway my tests did a retime of 1.5 of your scene (making it faster).

Couple of things I saw with your scene:
1) Your Fumefx preferences output paths are all over the place-this is the main culprit I suspect. I always output all three paths to the exact same location and check the 'Auto Synchronize Paths' too just to be safe.

2) Before I could perform the retime without error I had to re-cache with the Temperature channel exported too (you had everything else).

So for me it works as expected.

Hi! Thank you for your time! Actually i only wanted to minimize grid to speed up rendering time. I didn't want to add wavelet turbulence (there is a fluid mapping in Extra Detail rollout) neither make a retime. So, as i understand i must have Retime turned on to make fluid mapping work? But what if i don't want any changes in flow speed may i leave Time Scale Factor at 1,0? Anyway I'll do as you suggested and post the results here.

circusboy

05 May 2011, 05:34 PM

Hi! Thank you for your time! Actually i only wanted to minimize grid to speed up rendering time. I didn't want to add wavelet turbulence (there is a fluid mapping in Extra Detail rollout) neither make a retime. So, as i understand i must have Retime turned on to make fluid mapping work? But what if i don't want any changes in flow speed may i leave Time Scale Factor at 1,0? Anyway I'll do as you suggested and post the results here.
I think minimizing the grid/optimizing caches will really only benefit the size of the result cache on disk (if disk space is an issue). If you have fluid mapping and a lot of lights its still gonna be slower to render than not.
Yes retiming at 1.0 should keep the flow speed 'as is'.

EDIT: That being said I think that retiming is optional and you can uncheck it and not have to think about it.
But are you Excluding the 'Tex' Channel when you PP?

3DMasta

05 May 2011, 01:10 PM

I think minimizing the grid/optimizing caches will really only benefit the size of the result cache on disk (if disk space is an issue). If you have fluid mapping and a lot of lights its still gonna be slower to render than not.
Yes retiming at 1.0 should keep the flow speed 'as is'.

EDIT: That being said I think that retiming is optional and you can uncheck it and not have to think about it.
But are you Excluding the 'Tex' Channel when you PP?

No, i don't exclude Tex channel. Actually i kept all channels included in PP when i was trying to resolve the issue (just in case). As i said i only wanted to optimize/minimize cache, no wavelet and no retiming. Simulated Default cache with Extra Detail: Fluid Mapping and then Sim. Mode: Post; Post Processing rollout: Optimize Caches (Minimize Grid: On and All channels included (normally Temp and Velocity shouldn't be necessary in this case)).

Junaidishtar

05 May 2011, 02:01 AM

i have just installed fume 2.1c and this one also flickers. i thought version c is going to be fixed. i tried using mental ray but the renders looks flat, less details and quite diffused; while default scanline renders in depth, good detailed shadows and a lot of detail but it flickers. does anyone know which version is being used in most of the production these days and how to fix this flickering problem or if we cant then how to get same scanline details with mental ray.

Thanks

anyone facing the same problem ?
thanks

circusboy

05 May 2011, 12:13 PM

Flickers doing what again? A pp retime? Thats the only flicker I've seen and when it happens I haven't been able to avoid it.
I've also seen it with having too few strong shadow lights-adding more seemed to fix that but at the cost of increased render times.

Junaidishtar

05 May 2011, 07:16 PM

thanks circusboy.

i have been using 2.0 and meanwhile I heard in 2.1a the renders flicker. i thought it had something to do with beta version ( and there was this discussion going on this board as well, so i thought it was more like version thing than license) but again 2.1c came out with the same issue. moreover, i dont use more than one light for the key/main shadows.

circusboy

05 May 2011, 08:01 PM

i dont use more than one light for the key/main shadows.
But this is one case where I had to fight flickers. Because i only had one light with strong shadows.
Duplicating that light two more times reducing the intensity of all three lights by 2/3
(so that all three look the same as the original in intensity) was my best flicker-fix in that case. But at the expense of rendering fumefx with three lights intead of one (so quite a bit slower per frame).
But in that case nothing worked better. But it was a very circumstantial case (I wanted a single light with strong shadows). But i typically have at least two lights in any effect I do so that sort of flicker hasn't appeared again. So there may be a pattern.

kogden

05 May 2011, 03:33 PM

Hands up how many peeps that are having flickering issue (from rendering) don't actually have a legit license?..... All say a hearty hello to Kresmir ;P
I seriously have only seen that issue once in almost 3 years....conveniently since i started using the legit product.....
The one time i did see it was due the un-sampled threshold in the illumination tab being cranked up too high....

The other flickering issue i have seen poping up over the last few weeks is to do with re-timing.... Basically treat the fluid cache like you would if you were to take a 30fps image sequence and make it 5fps....it looks choppy cause simply put the frames ARN'T there...

You can however help reduce the "flickering" / "jittering" but ticking the magic box called cubic interpolation...this should make the transition between frames a little more seamless...this will only get you another 10-15%...that's about it, tops....
If you want to go slower... you have two options...

1. make the sim slower and get it as close as you can in the base sim....
2. use the re-timed cache and run it through the wavelet...basically this just helps fill the gaps....have tried the later 3 times, 2 were successful (not too sure why one didn't work)....

And i don't recall anyone posting this, but there is another "flicker" type of effect, makes the fume look like its underwater...its sorta cool...but if you see your fume wobbling like jelly, and your using a gravity vector..... delete the gravity vector and make a new one....
The times I've seen it, was when i had the vector animated, probably some sort of interpolation issue....deleting the vector and making it again fixed this flicker/wobble issue

Now back to the issue of flickering rendering.... if you are running the "extended trial..." and are getting the flickering, and you don't have some stupid set-up happening in your illumination tab...

do the following steps
set everything up ready to render
save your file
close max
re-opened a fresh version of max
click render!
That should solve your issue :)...

hope this helps out!

On a side note, I get there's alot of new peps on the forum! Which is fantastic! Welcome!

But I'd highly recommend to read the ENTIRE forum...there's hundreds of pages of info about the questions I ALWAYS see getting asked, and generally there's alot of answers and technics to using fume floating on this forum!

Take it easy!

Kieran

Burritoh

05 May 2011, 05:58 PM

Just FYI, there is a real possibility of stuttering (not flickering) on retimed sim data on legit licenses of Fume. Kresimir confirmed it in a test scene I sent him. Hopefully he can find the problem. I was hoping it was on my end... hoping it was user error... It appears not to be...

circusboy

05 May 2011, 06:31 PM

I haven't got the stutters yet (but I have seen posts/movies about it so I am not confusing the isuue). But I did get a flicker with a poste-retime smoke at half speed.
And its definetly not a license issue.

Google search it and you should be able to isolate items from this (gigantic) thread about flickers with retimes too-particularly when slowing the effect.

Burritoh

05 May 2011, 06:33 PM

Can someone explain this to me?

I have a simulation that I need to run through the Wavelet Turbulence, then Retime, and then Optimize. When I run the Wavelet on the Default, the resulting wavelet has a certain look that I like. Unfortunately, that wavelet sim weighs in at about 3GB per frame of sim data. And my 16GB of Ram is not enough to let Fume do the retiming on that.

So instead, I decided to retime the Wavelet first, then move it to a duplicate sim box to do the Wavelet on the retimed cache. That was easy enough, and I have plenty of ram for that.

However, my final look is very different this way. I don't mean the motion, but the actual detail in the smoke. The resolution is great, but it's almost like the wavelet didn't do anything. In fact, my wavelet files are now at 800MB per frame instead of 3GB, which is my first clue that something is not right.

Any idea what's going on? I figured that whether I retimed a wavelet or waveleted a retime, the result would be the same... no?

circusboy

05 May 2011, 06:37 PM

Did you exclude any channels with the retime?

ColonelMillerSG21

05 May 2011, 08:57 PM

Hey guys,

I hope that iīm in the right thread. Iīm workin on a Armageddon Sequence (Asteroid hits Earth) with a nice blast wave effect. The Problem is that i get more than one Fireball in the Smoke. I attached the Max file and a picture below. Some ideas what the problem is?

Sorry for my english, iīm from Germany.

tool2heal

05 May 2011, 09:40 PM

Hmm, ur setup seems a little awkward to me.

Firstly your iterations. Keep those lower. quality 5-6, and iterations between 80-200.
secondly ur fuel bouyancy and ignition are at 0? why?
same with smoke bouyancy, you can leave that on -1.

Remember that ur settings don't have to be 'realistic' to real world fluid dynamics most of the time.

Keep in mind that the longer ur particles live the longer ur fluids live.
but fire will always leave a trail of smoke meaning if u want ur fireball to die fast, make ur particles die faster. so make ur particles die off in say 5 frames.

The first thing I would try is to turn up ur maximum simulation steps.
when things are moving fast, those need to be turned up.

EDIT: here, I came across an old asteroid scene I was making ages ago that I never finished.
I stripped it of all the stuff not needed, it should give you an idea, (something to look over)
Notice I only birthed 1 particle, with a large radius. sim steps are at 3 because it's a fast moving object. spacing is low because I never got to a final stage.

This was after I saw 2012 and wanted to recreate the falling volcano debris, lol.

Any idea what's going on? I figured that whether I retimed a wavelet or waveleted a retime, the result would be the same... no?

Absolutely not :) let me explain why:

If you run the wavelet first, then retime, you have much more data to work with AND the simulation data is as correct as it is going to be.

If you run a wavelet simulation on an already retimed cache, there is already interpolated data from the retime, this will result in a different look.

The thing is when you retime to a slower speed you are faking data. An algorithm does its best to create new voxel data to fill in the gaps. It is much like Photoshop, take an web icon smiley of 16x16 pixels and blow it up to 100x100 pixels, it is barely decipherable and that is only 2d! Imagine trying this in 3d voxel grid.

Of course retiming to a faster speed is a snap, simply because you are removing data that already exists not creating new data.

ColonelMillerSG21

05 May 2011, 10:45 PM

@tool2heal: thousand thanks :)

Burritoh

05 May 2011, 03:36 PM

Absolutely not :) let me explain why:

If you run the wavelet first, then retime, you have much more data to work with AND the simulation data is as correct as it is going to be.

If you run a wavelet simulation on an already retimed cache, there is already interpolated data from the retime, this will result in a different look.

The thing is when you retime to a slower speed you are faking data. An algorithm does its best to create new voxel data to fill in the gaps. It is much like Photoshop, take an web icon smiley of 16x16 pixels and blow it up to 100x100 pixels, it is barely decipherable and that is only 2d! Imagine trying this in 3d voxel grid.

Of course retiming to a faster speed is a snap, simply because you are removing data that already exists not creating new data.

Thanks, John! That make sense. Sucks though, cause now I have to figure out how to get that look and not go outside my ram limits.

Aboubakr

05 May 2011, 01:08 PM

hi every one

can any one help me to fx this problem

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Y1ECYYvxk0

the smoke go bright in a frame then darken in next frame

is there any fix for that?

Aboubakr

05 May 2011, 02:06 PM

i think that i did fix the problem in after effects here the result

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQfcHzU--zM

any one have a good suggestion?

circusboy

05 May 2011, 02:18 PM

Thats a typical looking flicker issue.
I'm curious how easy it was for you to fix it in AE.

As I said just as few posts earlier - this thread mentions numerous flicker issues.
Best thing to do is seach the thread and see if any (and their workarounds) apply
and are easier for you than the one you used.

Aboubakr

05 May 2011, 03:37 PM

Thats a typical looking flicker issue.
I'm curious how easy it was for you to fix it in AE.

As I said just as few posts earlier - this thread mentions numerous flicker issues.
Best thing to do is seach the thread and see if any (and their workarounds) apply
and are easier for you than the one you used.

i just import the footage in after effects, then i did add "auto level" to the footage, u can find it effect/colour correction /

it will add more brightness to ur footage and remove the flicker , then to go back with the original light scene i did add exposure and set it to " -2 "

that what i did, so if any one want to test it please share with us the result to see if its working or not

ColonelMillerSG21

05 May 2011, 10:55 PM

Hey guys, me again ;)

I finished my Asteroid and i try to make an explosive Shockwave. Iīm trying that with some Circle emitters arround the target where the asteroid hits the planet. The problem is, that the smoke is looking like mushrooms, whatīs not very realistic. I thought i solve the problem with an higher Buoancy Rate, but that didnīt work out very well. (Image is attached. )
What i want is a shockwave with such pointed smoke.

(sorry for my english (Google translation))

renaissance01

05 May 2011, 02:13 AM

hi every one

can any one help me to fx this problem

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Y1ECYYvxk0

the smoke go bright in a frame then darken in next frame

is there any fix for that?

Seriously man, flickering has been mentioned a million times already...There is even advice for this on the previous page...Please 'Read' the forum before flooding it with the same questions...

Hands up how many peeps that are having flickering issue (from rendering) don't actually have a legit license?..... All say a hearty hello to Kresmir ;P
I seriously have only seen that issue once in almost 3 years....conveniently since i started using the legit product.....
The one time i did see it was due the un-sampled threshold in the illumination tab being cranked up too high....

The other flickering issue i have seen poping up over the last few weeks is to do with re-timing.... Basically treat the fluid cache like you would if you were to take a 30fps image sequence and make it 5fps....it looks choppy cause simply put the frames ARN'T there...

You can however help reduce the "flickering" / "jittering" but ticking the magic box called cubic interpolation...this should make the transition between frames a little more seamless...this will only get you another 10-15%...that's about it, tops....
If you want to go slower... you have two options...

1. make the sim slower and get it as close as you can in the base sim....
2. use the re-timed cache and run it through the wavelet...basically this just helps fill the gaps....have tried the later 3 times, 2 were successful (not too sure why one didn't work)....

And i don't recall anyone posting this, but there is another "flicker" type of effect, makes the fume look like its underwater...its sorta cool...but if you see your fume wobbling like jelly, and your using a gravity vector..... delete the gravity vector and make a new one....
The times I've seen it, was when i had the vector animated, probably some sort of interpolation issue....deleting the vector and making it again fixed this flicker/wobble issue

Now back to the issue of flickering rendering.... if you are running the "extended trial..." and are getting the flickering, and you don't have some stupid set-up happening in your illumination tab...

do the following steps
set everything up ready to render
save your file
close max
re-opened a fresh version of max
click render!
That should solve your issue :)...

hope this helps out!

On a side note, I get there's alot of new peps on the forum! Which is fantastic! Welcome!

But I'd highly recommend to read the ENTIRE forum...there's hundreds of pages of info about the questions I ALWAYS see getting asked, and generally there's alot of answers and technics to using fume floating on this forum!

Take it easy!

Kieran

Aboubakr

05 May 2011, 03:35 AM

@renaissance01 (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=234220)

ow! ok! i just didn't see it .......my bad ....:blush:

but what do u think about my tips ?:bounce:

renaissance01

05 May 2011, 04:04 AM

@renaissance01 (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=234220)

ow! ok! i just didn't see it .......my bad ....:blush:

but what do u think about my tips ?:bounce:

No worries, sorry if I seem blunt but it has been raised quite a bit lately.

Your approach sounds interesting. But i'd still try to mitigate the problem in max rather than in post. I wouldn't rely on it in production thats for sure :)

Aboubakr

05 May 2011, 04:23 AM

No worries, sorry if I seem blunt but it has been raised quite a bit lately.

Your approach sounds interesting. But i'd still try to mitigate the problem in max rather than in post. I wouldn't rely on it in production thats for sure :)

yep that's sure fixing the problem from the source is the best way :thumbsup:

Aboubakr

05 May 2011, 04:46 AM

Hey guys, me again ;)

I finished my Asteroid and i try to make an explosive Shockwave. Iīm trying that with some Circle emitters arround the target where the asteroid hits the planet. The problem is, that the smoke is looking like mushrooms, whatīs not very realistic. I thought i solve the problem with an higher Buoancy Rate, but that didnīt work out very well. (Image is attached. )
What i want is a shockwave with such pointed smoke.

This usually happens when your particles are big and you drive a lot of velocity into the voxels, lower the velocity in the particle source.

Hey guys, me again ;)

I finished my Asteroid and i try to make an explosive Shockwave. Iīm trying that with some Circle emitters arround the target where the asteroid hits the planet. The problem is, that the smoke is looking like mushrooms, whatīs not very realistic. I thought i solve the problem with an higher Buoancy Rate, but that didnīt work out very well. (Image is attached. )
What i want is a shockwave with such pointed smoke.

(sorry for my english (Google translation))

circusboy

05 May 2011, 02:12 PM

Hey, fellow Berliner! Prost!

This usually happens when your particles are big and you drive a lot of velocity into the voxels, lower the velocity in the particle source.
I don't think he is using particle source emitters but I think it is a good way to go.
Allan Mackay covers doing a shock wave with particle sources in his latest tutorial set:
http://vfxsolution.com/allanmckay/2011/02/fume-fx-core-fundamentals/

But simply put use pflow to emit particles in a circular pattern outwards from your impact zone
quickly-so that the wave moves as fast as you want it too, and then have them die off and then have Fumefx emit from them. Helps with getting speed, direction and distribution in a believable fashion.

How to deal with lots of fumefx containers in one scene? Or you get pay by watching? :)

Deko, I sent you a PM. :)

fiveoften

05 May 2011, 09:01 PM

Hey guys, me again ;)

I finished my Asteroid and i try to make an explosive Shockwave. Iīm trying that with some Circle emitters arround the target where the asteroid hits the planet. The problem is, that the smoke is looking like mushrooms, whatīs not very realistic. I thought i solve the problem with an higher Buoancy Rate, but that didnīt work out very well. (Image is attached. )
What i want is a shockwave with such pointed smoke.

Hey guys,
what's up? I thought it would be cool to show you what I've been working on for the last week.
In the past I did it like that: for every fume version that came out I simulated through all the properties to build a huge library for all possible value combinations. Like you can imagine that's a lot of work. :)
I was always looking for a tool that can do that for me automatically, but never found one. So I decided to look into maxscripting and build my own. It's not finished yet! For example the chuck norris checkbox doesn't do anything at the moment, but I think it's stable enough to let you guys check it out and perhaps it saves you some time, too.
http://www.fumefx-training.com/training/IgnitionBeta.JPG

Here is the beta:
www.fumefx-training.com/training/IgnitionBeta04.rar

This is how it works:
01. Add in your Fume objects (Grids and Sources work at this point)
02. Add in the properties and set the values (The order is important! FIRST ADD the property THEN set the value!! I know that is not how you would expect it to work, I will change that in the future)
03. Hit one of the buttons! Set the path or path!
04. That's it!

If you have any ideas on how to make it better, or if you find any bugs, please let me know!

cheers,
Fabian

joconnell

05 May 2011, 08:59 AM

Well that seems like a total waste of time, I can't see any situation where that'd be useful at all ;)

FabianB

05 May 2011, 09:12 AM

Well that seems like a total waste of time, I can't see any situation where that'd be useful at all ;)
:) hahaha, it already saved me some time. I guess my explanation wasn't really good.
It's not only good for building huge Fume libraries, but let's say a client is unsure about the look they want. You could setup your scene, add smoke amount or whatever to the script. Set a start-, step and end value. Start the sim and when you come back the next morning, you will have a lot of iterations of the same sim (simed or rendered). Or let's say you like the sim, but you are not sure, if it would even look better with another vorticity value. Just set a range and hit sim, after that you could choose the value that looks best. It pretty much helps you to create the best looking result, without having to go back and forth and fiddle around with the values. After you have simed you can even go through the caches and the previews will update in realtime.

In the past I would just rename the number sequence on my cache files but that seems like a very inefficient way to do things.

Is there a simpler way?

JohnnyRandom

05 May 2011, 06:20 PM

:) hahaha, it already saved me some time. I guess my explanation wasn't really good.
It's not only good for building huge Fume libraries, but let's say a client is unsure about the look they want. You could setup your scene, add smoke amount or whatever to the script. Set a start-, step and end value. Start the sim and when you come back the next morning, you will have a lot of iterations of the same sim (simed or rendered). Or let's say you like the sim, but you are not sure, if it would even look better with another vorticity value. Just set a range and hit sim, after that you could choose the value that looks best. It pretty much helps you to create the best looking result, without having to go back and forth and fiddle around with the values. After you have simed you can even go through the caches and the previews will update in realtime.

Interesting approach :) I wrote one real similar a while back. It actually duplicates the grid though. You basically pick a base grid and set the amount of copies, pick the paramaters and set the increment amount and go. It builds them up in a grid pattern so you can render all the results at once, much like the smoke settings examples Jeff Lim (Galagast) made a while back, in fact he was the one that inspired it.

I was going to work in a straight duplicate just haven't spent the time on it yet.

In the past I would just rename the number sequence on my cache files but that seems like a very inefficient way to do things.

Is there a simpler way?

Oh gawd yes! Gen tab>Playback>Start Frame set it to the frame you want to playback from.

chrispy2001

05 May 2011, 06:49 PM

Oh gawd yes! Gen tab>Playback>Start Frame set it to the frame you want to playback from.

Thank you sir.

FabianB

05 May 2011, 07:44 PM

Hey guys,
here is a video showing the script in action:

http://vimeo.com/24329699

I hope it helps to pick up the concept behind it.

syedamin7

05 May 2011, 09:23 PM

@Fabian: nice script. thanks

hey guys, its been a while since i've done any tests in fumefx. I wanted to test out a flame with thick smoke. like chemical fire.

http://www.vimeo.com/24331833

lemme know what you guys think.
cheers

JohnnyRandom

05 May 2011, 11:52 PM

Hey guys,
here is a video showing the script in action:

http://vimeo.com/24329699

I hope it helps to pick up the concept behind it.

Ahh I see, heh, cool :) Yep I kinda misunderstood. This is what I still need to finish:

http://4rand.com/scripts/FumeFXComparaSim/ComparaSim_example.avi

FabianB

05 May 2011, 12:20 AM

Ahh I see, heh, cool :) Yep I kinda misunderstood. This is what I still need to finish:

http://4rand.com/scripts/FumeFXComparaSim/ComparaSim_example.avi

That looks awesome! Actually that's exactly how I started on my script. First I had it so the different properties would get distributed over different grids, but after a little bit of testing I thought it would be better to have everything on one grid. Because that way, if you have an already set up production shoot, it would work too. Right now I'm working on a function to simulate different values in one go. Like every vorticity with every advection stride you set, pretty much like in Jeff's R&Ds. I started maxscripting one week ago (I have some c and vb.net experience) so I still have some problems with the code for that! :)

JohnnyRandom

05 May 2011, 01:34 AM

Ah that's funny, we are all on the same thought pattern :)

That was the last version I have anything to show for, the next increment is in disaster stage right now, I begin re-writing a bunch of stuff and adding a method that would copy the grid in place so it would make more sense for a shot as opposed to just R&D. Which is exactly why I haven't worked on it, it is FUBARATM :D

I like the stepping through different advection modes, that sounds cool.

Aboubakr

05 May 2011, 01:40 PM

hi every one

i made a little test to remove the bubble effect at the start of explosion here the result

hey guys!
I did a quick explosion test. used a object as an emitter for the main explosion. Never tried that before.
lemme know what you guys think.

http://www.vimeo.com/24408918

Glacierise

05 May 2011, 12:05 PM

Too much turbulence, otherwise nice :)

syedamin7

05 May 2011, 12:24 PM

thanks Hristo
gonna tweak that and post soon!
cheers!

Glacierise

05 May 2011, 12:53 PM

Also, have the speed/scale relationship in mind, if you want it very big, making it very fast kills the scale ;)

kogden

05 May 2011, 01:13 PM

Nice first pass!

A couple of things I'd recommend,

Reduce your turbulence. (Could be turbulence in the Fume grid, or the turb on the object source, it could potentially be the vorticity amount...sorta stabbing at every option as i don't know your fume grid...)

Your temp buoyancy/ fuel buoyancy or just buoyancy (depends on your setting really) are a little too high, its creating the main explosion to become stringy and stick like in the center.

It looks like your clipping your low threshold in the shader and/or having the smoke disspate extremely quickly, creating an overly fractal pattern through out the smoke, generally speaking, smoke in real life doesn't dissipate, it disperses. Steam dissipates, smoke doesn't.

In regards to the initial shape that your not happy with, try make that initial shape with the mesh, animating from the ignition point, up until the first 5-10 frames (depending on the speed you want it to get to that initial position).

Hope that helps :)

Kieran

Anesthaesia

06 June 2011, 10:28 AM

Hey Fabian,

I really liked the sound of this tool, however when trying to sim I get the following error:

Unknown property: "processPostedMessages" in #Struct:windows

Is this Max version restricted? I'm using 2010 on XP 64...

Cheers,
D

Hey guys,
what's up? I thought it would be cool to show you what I've been working on for the last week.
In the past I did it like that: for every fume version that came out I simulated through all the properties to build a huge library for all possible value combinations. Like you can imagine that's a lot of work. :)
I was always looking for a tool that can do that for me automatically, but never found one. So I decided to look into maxscripting and build my own. It's not finished yet! For example the chuck norris checkbox doesn't do anything at the moment, but I think it's stable enough to let you guys check it out and perhaps it saves you some time, too.

Here is the beta:
www.fumefx-training.com/training/IgnitionBeta04.rar (http://www.fumefx-training.com/training/IgnitionBeta04.rar)

This is how it works:
01. Add in your Fume objects (Grids and Sources work at this point)
02. Add in the properties and set the values (The order is important! FIRST ADD the property THEN set the value!! I know that is not how you would expect it to work, I will change that in the future)
03. Hit one of the buttons! Set the path or path!
04. That's it!

If you have any ideas on how to make it better, or if you find any bugs, please let me know!

cheers,
Fabian

FabianB

06 June 2011, 11:01 AM

Hey Fabian,

I really liked the sound of this tool, however when trying to sim I get the following error:

Unknown property: "processPostedMessages" in #Struct:windows

Is this Max version restricted? I'm using 2010 on XP 64...

Cheers,
D

Hey D!

Thanks for the info. I know what this is and it will be fixed in the next version.
In Win7 the window-redrawing is a little lazy, so I had to add a function so the progressbar updates correctly. It seems that this function doesn't work on xp.
The next version will be out by the end of this week, or early next week. I added some cool stuff like: Now you can load in caches and old setups, full spacewarp support and the chuck norris button finally works. :)

cheers,
Fabian

FabianB

06 June 2011, 11:31 AM

ok, here is an in-between version, just for testing purpose, that should work on XP:

http://www.fumefx-training.com/training/IgnitionBeta42.rar

Spacewarp support works in that version, but is still a little buggy under some conditions.
It would be awesome if someone with xp64 could test it.

cheers,
Fabian

Anesthaesia

06 June 2011, 11:44 AM

Awesome Fabian :)

It's working now on XP64. I'll be sure to let you know of any other issues that may come up.

Cheers,
D

syedamin7

06 June 2011, 12:15 PM

@kogden and Glacierise
thanks guys! the feedback really helped.
so i made a test based on ur feedback, though i forgot to slow it down, to make it look bigger in scale.
http://www.vimeo.com/24557903

let me know what you guys think
cheers.

Glacierise

06 June 2011, 12:46 PM

Two main issues - your vorticity is too high, which creates too much swirly high-frequency detail when the shapes develop, and you have the dreaded fume bubbles at the base :) Don't hesitate to use both particle and object sources, just to break up the contour there.

FabianB

06 June 2011, 12:53 PM

Everything Hristo said + it looks like you use a particle source: try to bring the radius down a little but emit some more, that helps to break up those bubbles too.
I think it already looks great!

jlelievre

06 June 2011, 01:03 PM

Along with the comments that have already been made... one thing I have noticed in a lot of explosions; mine included; is that no one uses wind. Very rarely would you have an explosion and not have some sort of wind or lateral movement to it. Lately I have been going back and adding a subtle amount of wind to my fire and explosions and you would be suprised how much it helps! It will also help with breaking up the uniformity of the sim.

Looks great so far! Keeping pushing it! :)

circusboy

06 June 2011, 02:00 PM

Yeah I agree-here's a good example a former colleague of mine did -with some wind.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGkDcpYYOmE

PsychoSilence

06 June 2011, 02:20 PM

Yep, that one looks bad a$$! Takes a good amount of tweakage to get the timing spot on.

Also, syedamin7, if you use turbulence step away from that for a sec and get the other stuff nailed. I personally am not a fan of the Fume Build in Turbulence, i would always try to break it up with a second set of velocities going through the sim. You can achieve that with particles that emit nothing but velocities or even try debris going through that acts as a collision object. Make the debris a fume object source with a little temperature, the new fume behaves a little different with geo collision objects...

Its a bit too fast, and for some reason it feels like its happening in 3 phases. It stops and another phase starts which feels a bit weird.

Hey there,

heres a lil updated one

http://www.vimeo.com/24979575

Aditya

circusboy

06 June 2011, 05:45 PM

Hmm-
I think I like the way the first one finishes better.
This version ends up too smooth and blobby.

But the begining is better here.

So a mix of the two. And maybe start playing with multiple sources now-looks a bit too symetrical.

aqua9

06 June 2011, 05:40 PM

Hmm-
I think I like the way the first one finishes better.
This version ends up too smooth and blobby.

But the begining is better here.

So a mix of the two. And maybe start playing with multiple sources now-looks a bit too symetrical.

hey thanx for replying,
am on with working that out will update it with better one,
heres some tests using krakatoa

http://www.vimeo.com/25078646

Thanx

xplodeworkshop

06 June 2011, 07:43 PM

hello guys actually these days i m working on chopper explosion... and i want a realistic explosion with lots of fire details.. but i m not getting properly don't know may be i m not doing well fire shader or something like this.. so i need your help .. so please help me out

thanks

syedamin7

06 June 2011, 07:48 PM

hello guys actually these days i m working on chopper explosion... and i want a realistic explosion with lots of fire details.. but i m not getting properly don't know may be i m not doing well fire shader or something like this.. so i need your help .. so please help me out

thanks

theres a really good fumefx tutorial by Allan Mckay, and in it he makes a scene where a helicopter is hit with a missile and it explodes and crashes. might be worth it for you to look into that.
cheers

xplodeworkshop

06 June 2011, 08:14 PM

i dont have his dvd.. so i cant do it by him....

circusboy

06 June 2011, 09:19 PM

I guess start something and we will critique it.
Frankly something like that is so complex and context sensitive there really is no "do this and this and this and you are done" answer.

The Allan Mckay vids are really the best way to hands on overview of doing explodes.
For best results I never stop where he does either. But to get a great overview as to how to use paramaters together in context of a shot you really should get those videos.

Or at least try and start something on your own.

BTW about the helicopter scene (the animated geometry)-
I asked Allan about making it available once - but it was
too client related to get permission to release to the public.

depleteD

06 June 2011, 11:08 PM

@xplodeworkshop -kick back and plan what you want to do. Work from Big To small.

Is your helicopter going to be consumed by an explosion? If so Fume is your main element. If not . Your going to have to start with a RBD sim.

Get your fume blocked. BLock in the explosion collideing with the major parts, and emitting smoke of other parts. Variety is important to get the velocities stired up. Play with the settings and see how the values mix with eachother. For explosions you need high temperature, smoke emitting from fuel and high expansion. Also, animate the time scale for extra punch. I also recommend doing it particle based. (Particle Source)

The put on the finishing touches. Particles following fume, sparks, and debris emitting of your helicopter geometry.

And most importantly, make it look awesome. Post your results and get critique.

-Andrew

Furball89

06 June 2011, 04:25 PM

Hey!

How do i stop emitting smoke from the "object source" ? i.e. when i animate the smoke amount to 0 the smoke from inside the object also disappears as if the smoke was emitting from the object's shell.. wasn't there an option somewhere to make smoke emit from the solid or the volume of the object??.
i am using Fume Fx 2.0.

thanks for help :)

circusboy

06 June 2011, 06:18 PM

emit free flow?

Furball89

06 June 2011, 06:36 PM

thanks for reply.
I tried free flow but it doesnt work :( . free flow is use full only if you don't want the fluid's emission to be affected by the object motion i think i.e. it makes the object behave as fluid as well IMO. the solid and volume option are only available for objects, sadly, Not for the object source !?!? isn't there any way to just stop shooting out smoke.. pff... ? the effect i am working on involves smoke form moving text and then i want smoke to dissipate and leave the text as is (made of particles) so i can render with krakatoa without using matting! i animated off the temperature to 0 and dissipation strength to 100 over 1 key-frame but the smoke isn't dieing off abruptly!!

thanks for help.

JohnnyRandom

06 June 2011, 07:32 PM

Set your smoke dissipation to 99.9 and it will dissipate, I thought Kreso had fixed that maybe I am wrong.

As for object source and volume, when you use an object source it does not emit from the volume (not intentionally, anyway) but the surface. You have to take voxel size and object placement into account. It will try to emit from as close to the surface as possible an fill the least amount of voxels as it can while satisfying the object surface emission requirement.

EDIT: and I will quote myself about freeflow: :p

BTW some clarification about Freeflow, it only affects the FumeFX source velocities and nothing else, people seem to get this confused with some other function that it does not do. So for example if your source object velocities are set to 10,0 with freeflow on the velocities will be disregarded. Nothing else.:thumbsup:

Furball89

06 June 2011, 08:28 PM

Set your smoke dissipation to 99.9 and it will dissipate, I thought Kreso had fixed that maybe I am wrong.

nope not working :( ... i even killed gravity and buoyancy which screwed up the already emitted smoke too! [white flag]

thanks for help :)

circusboy

06 June 2011, 08:41 PM

-Also make sure your Advection solver is 'default' (the other two dissipate less by design).

-What is your Dissipation min density?-Try making it higher.

-Are you emitting smoke from both simulate fuel and from a source?
Maybe start with one or the other.

-Whats you time scale set to?

Furball89

06 June 2011, 09:19 PM

-Also make sure your Advection solver is 'default' (the other two dissipate less by design).

-What is your Dissipation min density?-Try making it higher.

-Are you emitting smoke from both simulate fuel and from a source?
Maybe start with one or the other.

-Whats you time scale set to?

i am using 2.0 as i mentioned earlier.. i dun have any other advection solver o.O
i tried disp.m in.dens. of 999 but that did not help either :( . Also I am not simulating any fuel.. only exporting smoke and velocity channels for krak pass. time scale is 1.0 throughout the animation.
the problem is i cannot animate the smoke amount to 0 so even if i max out dissipation, the smoke doesn't die completely (and i am using "set" not "add to voxel") is there any other hack ? maybe i could animate the smoke to 0, and at that time, using particle flow birth particles on the animated text object? i am afraid it would create visible artifacts in the animation :(
thanks for help.

circusboy

06 June 2011, 01:45 PM

Maybe a movie clip would help for context.

JohnnyRandom

06 June 2011, 04:37 PM

So does the smoke create the text or just fill the volume of the text or what? I am also having a hard time understanding what it is you want to do.

Make a quick animatic or at the very least a simple scene describing what it is you are doing.

We can bat crap around all day and waste a bunch of time... or get it straight out of the gate ;)

xplodeworkshop

06 June 2011, 05:08 PM

@Andrew its really true sir which u told me... and i m doing the same thing...... but i m unable to get the air chopper explosion.. i m doing nice simulation but not like a air explosion.. and even problem getting with shader..... unable to get explosion color..
so how can i get that..
thanks

depleteD

06 June 2011, 05:58 PM

@xplodeworkshop - can you post some images so I can critique. When your doing an explosion, their isn't a set of steps to achieveing a certain look. You have to understand whats happening with fume and then adjust accordingly. This is the problem solving part of the job dude. The fun part.

Move the color slider around...render....see what it did.....repeat....then you will know what colors pop up where.

circusboy

06 June 2011, 06:02 PM

Maybe even go through something like this-just to see how stuff works.
http://3d.dtuts.com/3d-tutorials/3dsmax/fumefx-explosion-tutorial/

acmilancrazy

06 June 2011, 01:47 AM

hey guys! im new here (my first post)...so i hope im posting in the right place...so, im using 3dsmax 2010 with fumefx and im trying to create a fiery vortex effect like the one in harry potter where dumbledore summons the big firestorm in the cave...see the clip here... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZTeHYpGq9E (the fire starts about 20 sec in)....ive searched high and low for a tutorial, or some hint at how to do something like this...my idea is to create an object (linked to the fumefx object thing) that extrudes (or grows), eventually forming a ring of fire...attached/linked should be a screenshot.. http://imm.io/6ACk (http://imm.io/6ACk) sorry it looks terrible right now so ill gladly take any help i can get haha..and just so you know, im using 3ds max 2010 with a dualcore amd turion64 X2 processor (2 Ghz), 4 gigs of ram, integrated gfx card on a 64 bit Win7 system...and fumefx v2.1a

depleteD

06 June 2011, 01:59 AM

Do it with a particle sim. Get a really cool vortex sim going and then use it as a particle source :D

Thats pretty much what they did.

To do exactly what they did. Advect your vortex particles through a large 3d sim. Then make many thin fume boxes and use a particle source on that obj. Maybe u could even use the fumefx source.

-Andrew

acmilancrazy

06 June 2011, 03:18 AM

thanks for the fast reply! i appreciate it! now, im not really "new" per-say to 3ds max, but im new to particle systems...if you get a min could you explain how you do some of this? or link me to a tutorial if thats allowed? like, you say use a particle sim..is fumefx not a particle sim? are you talking about something like PArray or PFlow? i tried using Vortex on fumefx particles and it didnt really do anything..

so, i guess my question now is, at the risk of sounding like an idiot, if i figure out how to make a vortex sim, how do you "advect the vortex particles thru a large 3d sim"? i saw advection settings in the sim tab for fumefx but i dont know how i would go about doing all of that, or what kind of large 3d sim to use for that matter...and then the suggestion about using thin fume boxes, whats the point of making them? and do you use the particle source on them all, grouped together? or seperately?

i really appreciate the help! im trying really hard to wrap my head around this stuff so i apologize in advance for any *facepalms* i cause =]

kogden

06 June 2011, 03:12 PM

There was an article that briefly touched this subject a couple of years ago.

http://features.cgsociety.org/story_custom.php?story_id=5215

What version of fume are you using? I may if i get some time through a quick/rough proof of concept up for you to go from... if i get time..

But basically do what depleteD suggested and look at getting a pflow system working with a vortex spacewarp. And run that through a large fume container :)

Take it easy

JonathanFreisler

06 June 2011, 02:11 AM

AND pretty interesting discussion on how they used Nvidia GPU for all there 'realtime' sims.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQef_6gio14

acmilancrazy

06 June 2011, 09:04 AM

There was an article that briefly touched this subject a couple of years ago.

http://features.cgsociety.org/story_custom.php?story_id=5215

What version of fume are you using? I may if i get some time through a quick/rough proof of concept up for you to go from... if i get time..

But basically do what depleteD suggested and look at getting a pflow system working with a vortex spacewarp. And run that through a large fume container :)

Take it easy

im using fumefx v2.1a..that would be really cool if you could make a quick concept file for me i'd be very grateful haha...but ok, make a pflow system, bind it to a vortex and then run it through fumefx as an object/source? that seems simple enough (i think haha)...so what depleteD was saying was to do that..ok i guess the thin fume boxes confused me haha (its still a little confusing haha)

PS that youtube link jon freisler posted was actually pretty cool and kinda showed what their particle systems looked like so thanks for that as well!

circusboy

06 June 2011, 12:20 PM

4 Gigs of RAM is not a lot for fumefx-so just for details sake you may find that doing several smaller fume boxes may be the only way you can get any level of resolution (small enough spacing). You might even want to just render several different incarnations of the streaky fire effect with an ortho camera and texture map them onto transparent overlapping grids (that are deformed into a vortex).

Doing everything with a single large fumebox might be impossible for you (rum out of memory= crash) when you detail the resolution to production quality levels.

acmilancrazy

06 June 2011, 05:42 AM

ok, so do i make thin fume boxes and make a circle with them?

Edit: i just made a boxy circle thing and so now my problem is that its only rendering one of the fumefx sources in the fumefx preview as well as the scanline rendering =/

circusboy

06 June 2011, 01:52 PM

You will unlikely be able to have 'circular' patterns with just long thin grids. They would have to be wide enough to contain the radius of the vortex. Which is normaly possible-however with only 4 gigs of ram you may find you crash generating hi-rez versions of your flames.

Your most likely way forward would be simpler long (but keep the overall scaling as small as possible) thin grids rendered with a camera straight on (in an external scene) to create texture maps for deformed grids (in a vortex) which will hold the texture result in your final scene.

Furball89

06 June 2011, 02:12 PM

Hey!
I was able to solve the problem i mentioned in the previous post using matte objects in krakatoa :) .
Now i am faced with another one heh. Have a look at this really cool (IMO) effect (http://vimeo.com/8752513) . How would you recreate this effect, i.e. say you had an animated object moving over a large area, it obviously isn't computationally feasible to capture the entire motion in one single fumefx grid right? (in this case enclosing the entire bird's motion in one fume fx grid?) what alternative would you suggest ? make a large enough fumefx grid to enclose the fluid up till it dissipates and link the grid to the position controller of the animated object? (does the motion of the grid effect the simulation of the fluid?). I think this was asked before, but i couldn't find it in search. :( .

4 Gigs of RAM is not a lot for fumefx-so just for details sake you may find that doing several smaller fume boxes may be the only way you can get any level of resolution

Can you really split a big fumefx grid into smaller grids and simulate each one separately without the side effects mentioned here (http://limjeff.wordpress.com/2010/02/11/fumefx-partitioning/). From personal experience 4 GB ram with x64 is better than 4 GB ram with x32 (atleast as far as rendering in krakatoa is concerned, the same pc on 32 bit gave me "bad allocation error", but rendered smoothly in the 64 bit version, probably because x64 allows for infinitely large virtual address space or 1x10^19 bytes approx.)

thanks. :)

circusboy

06 June 2011, 03:22 PM

Plus a 32 bit computer with 4 gigs of ram is really only about 2 useable gigs of ram (as Windows sits on the rest).

Allan Mackay (again) has a really good workshop on applying fume to a Phoenix.
Here is a quick clip:
http://www.vimeo.com/18112533

I think the longer breakdown video is here (look at the entry dated Dec 22nd 2010)-but you'll have to join his mailing list.
http://www.allanmckay.com/allanmckay/
The last half of the video is all about the pheonix shots including it flying around and tracking fume on it.

Furball89

06 June 2011, 05:04 PM

Thanks a lot for the links. the video is like 76 minutes! i just watched the starting bit, very interesting, confused about the system scale (funny, i don't remember coming across this one in the documentation, seems pretty important though :S)

thanks again.

JohnnyRandom

06 June 2011, 06:42 PM

System Scale is just a multiplier. Makes it easier to adjust to oddball scene scales and use Fume parameters that you are used too.

The reason it is not included in the help is because it is an unsupported feature, "Use at your Own Risk"

acmilancrazy

06 June 2011, 10:11 PM

Ok, so just for future reference, any idea why i cant render more than one fumefx grid at a time (as i said in my last post, it wont render out more than one grid in fumefx preview or scanline)?

Now, if i was to do what you said and make texture maps to apply to grids deformed into a vortex, what fumefx parameters do i need to look at for setting up the flames (for rendering in ortho cam) to look like they are flying around in a vortex (like in the harry potter clip i posted)? do i need turbulence or wind or what? and can i get realistic results using scanline? or should i use final render or vray? or even mental ray? thanks for your help!

P.S. @ depleteD, do you know Joe Jackman? hes a friend of mine that works for Blizzard!

EDIT: could i use stock fire/explosion footage somehow for the texture? how would i do this?

circusboy

06 June 2011, 01:54 PM

Previews of fume fx only works local to that grid-it isn't designed to look anywhere else for that display.
But rendering multiple grids once they are properly cached should be no problem as long as they are visible to render. I do this all the time-so something must amiss in your setup-like are all the grids visible to render? Do they all have a light?

Scanline should be fine. I've found that vray tends to render fumes a little faster per frame-but thats the only real benefit. I hear Final Render adds additional GI support for Fume. mr try it but it might be the least tested (I've never used it for fume).

For the look of the fire streak grids I'd put the emitter at one end and blow it strongly down the length of the grid-but keep the flame within the grid. Have it dissipate before it hists the the other end. For parameters-all of them until it looks good!:)
Seriously you should try and get of the Allan Mackay tutorials (and some of it is free) just to get a proper overview of the Fume parameters in the context of flames (and other typical fx). Really there is no 'do-this-and-this-and-this-and-you-are-done' answer. Context is *EVERYTHING*!

Stock footage is a possibility-there are plenty of providers out there-just do a google search for 'fire stock footage'.

Glacierise

06 June 2011, 03:39 PM

Scanline only gives 8bit framebuffer out of FFX ...

acmilancrazy

06 June 2011, 10:38 PM

Hmmm, i wasnt using any lights with my grids...but one of them was showing up clearly, and the others were completely not there ahha..

ill try what you suggested with the emitter and ill try to check out the tuts you mentioned so thanks for that!

as for stock footage, i actually have the video copilot action essentials pack (not the 2k but the 720p, if need be i can probably get the 2k)...i tried making a few materials using the video clips of fire, selecting "bitmap" under diffuse color and copying that over to the opacity parameter to get rid of the black background...i also increased self illumination to 100, but it still looks like crap when i apply the material to vertical planes..like, the colors are off and each flame looks really small for some reason (compared to the size of the grid/plane) even when i use the UVW modifier (fit to bitmap option)...is there a better way?

im starting to think it would be better if i just used Trapcode particular plugin in After Effects (which i have a lot more experience with than 3ds max haha) and applied the fire footage to sprites or something because ive done stuff like that before, and the colors arent messed up when i RAM preview it in AE (unlike the results im getting in 3dsMax)...but i'd rather do it in max so hopefully someone has some insight into getting the stock footage to look good...

@Glacierise, are you saying i can only output 8bit color with scanline? or is 8bit pertaining to memory? or both? haha...but is that really an issue? like, will it not look as good? the whole point of doing this is to figure out the effect so that i can composite a fiery vortex of flames onto my 1080p footage (with after effects), so it needs to look real (or as real as possible ;) )...

Glacierise

06 June 2011, 07:48 AM

I meant it doesn't output floating point unclamped color, which limits the extents of comp tweaks you can do.

aqua9

06 June 2011, 01:51 PM

an update on explosion

http://www.vimeo.com/25553685

Thanx

aqua9

06 June 2011, 05:54 AM

some new stuff
need ur C&C on this one guys ..... i feel something makes it feel not in the shot

http://www.vimeo.com/25613848

Thanx & Regards

kogden

06 June 2011, 12:48 PM

Great to see your putting fume into scenes!

Some C&C... apologies if its a little direct just finished a long ass day at work :D

The shadow seems to sharp compared to the shadow under the bike, make it blurrier :)
No interactive lighting from the fire on the ground :)
Fire seems really flat, no peaks and its just orange, shoot closer to this ref for the fire, it has a range of color from dull red to hot white :)

http://images.ookaboo.com/photo/s/Day_fire_usfs_01_s.jpg

Could be cool to make the ball object be something :) instead of the dark void :)
Always helps to make a bit of dynamic camera, something that moves around....

Keep going! its nice too see your progress over the month!

Kieran

circusboy

06 June 2011, 02:41 PM

Hmmm, i wasnt using any lights with my grids...but one of them was showing up clearly, and the others were completely not there ahha..

FYI in case - fire doesn't need a light to render visibly. But smoke *always* does.
And shadowed lights are the only way to get self shadowing detail on the smoke anyway so you'll always want them in your setup.

And if you are using spot lights make sure the fume grids are inside the spot's cone volume.

aqua9

06 June 2011, 07:21 PM

Great to see your putting fume into scenes!

Some C&C... apologies if its a little direct just finished a long ass day at work :D

The shadow seems to sharp compared to the shadow under the bike, make it blurrier :)
No interactive lighting from the fire on the ground :)
Fire seems really flat, no peaks and its just orange, shoot closer to this ref for the fire, it has a range of color from dull red to hot white :)

http://images.ookaboo.com/photo/s/Day_fire_usfs_01_s.jpg

Could be cool to make the ball object be something :) instead of the dark void :)
Always helps to make a bit of dynamic camera, something that moves around....

Keep going! its nice too see your progress over the month!

Kieran

Hey Kieran,

thanx for the reply and for the encouragement,
and really appreciate u for the feedback,
will fix the issues,
and the bg is about 8 to 10 seconds shot which currently am tracking, also will include that oneon the next update :)

thanx once again for the support :)

Aditya

Burritoh

06 June 2011, 12:54 PM

I seem to be having all kinds of trouble with Fume lately.

Problem #1 involved horrible stuttering when retiming cache that had animated time scale. Kresimir knows about this one.

Problem #2 involves flickering smoke, where the flicker corresponds exactly to the interpolated frames done during a retime. No idea what this one is...need to investigate further...

Problem #3 happens every now and then and is frankly pissing me off: running a wavelet sim doesn't actually do anything but resim the default. File sizes are the same, and the resolution is the same as the default. I am telling Fume every step of the way to write every channel except Fuel (I only need smoke for my effect). Yet after I run the wavelet and check my data and files, they're essentially the same thing as my original default.

What's the solution to this?

I'm using 2.1c on a very legit license, and am getting increasingly frustrated with Fume 2's antics.

circusboy

06 June 2011, 01:35 PM

#1 I've repro'ed just by trying to slow down a sim dramatically-like say .01 (of real time).
Kewl that Kresmir knows about it.

#2 I've repro'ed this as well. If it shows up I couldn't get rid of it. Maybe try adding lights?
But I haven't repro'ed in 2.1c-only 2.1b. FYI You can see it in the Allan Mackay's Fumefx v2.0 core fundimentals training set in his movie of the finished volcano. But as it happens I simed and retimed his finished scene in 2.1c (I think he had 2.1a) and the flicker was gone from my rendered result. So something seemed to get better in 2.1c.

#3 You've reported something like this before in other threads and I'm afraid i just cannot repro. What are your fume preferences output paths set to?
-I always make sure the paths point to some place with space.
-I define the same path for all three
-I check auto Synchronize Paths as well.
All I know is I've never repro'ed your issue-even on other people's workstations (where if I load a fume fx scene I always have to configure these paths to correspod localy to that machine and my user account).

You say you are not outputting the Fuel channel-so you are not doing a 'Fire creates smoke' right? Only smoke from sources?
Anyway I was get a warning if I don't have the correct channels cached. Never a rendundant, identical result to default...

Burritoh

06 June 2011, 01:49 PM

#1 I've repro'ed just by trying to slow down a sim dramatically-like say .01 (of real time).
Kewl that Kresmir knows about it.

#2 I've repro'ed this as well. If it shows up I couldn't get rid of it. Maybe try adding lights?
But I haven't repro'ed in 2.1c-only 2.1b. FYI You can see it in the Allan Mackay's Fumefx v2.0 core fundimentals training set in his movie of the finished volcano. But as it happens I simed and retimed his finished scene in 2.1c (I think he had 2.1a) and the flicker was gone from my rendered result. So something seemed to get better in 2.1c.

#3 You've reported something like this before in other threads and I'm afraid i just cannot repro. What are your fume preferences output paths set to?
-I always make sure the paths point to some place with space.
-I define the same path for all three
-I check auto Synchronize Paths as well.
All I know is I've never repro'ed your issue-even on other people's workstations (where if I load a fume fx scene I always have to configure these paths to correspod localy to that machine and my user account).

You say you are not outputting the Fuel channel-so you are not doing a 'Fire creates smoke' right? Only smoke from sources?
Anyway I was get a warning if I don't have the correct channels cached. Never a rendundant, identical result to default...

Number 2 on that list is causing us some problems on a current project actually...

As for Number 3, I just did a test and it seems to happen if "Adaptive" is disabled. If I re-enable Adaptive, it behaves normally. The thing is, I kinda wanted to turn Adapative off, since I have a very fixed scale for my effect, and optimizing retimed cache sometimes returns garbage if Adaptive is on...(but I guess that's for the second fume box anyway, so...)

circusboy

06 June 2011, 02:16 PM

For #3 what if you have Adaptive 'on' but at a very low sensitivity?
I think I've done just about everything with adaptive 'on' with at the very lowest value of the .01 (default) sensitivity with no issues. You could try .005 or .001.
With much larger values it was faster but also had brutal, chunky dissipation-but thats it. And always circumstantial. But I never really had any 'scale' issues...not sure what you mean there in relation to adaptive being 'on' or not?

Burritoh

06 June 2011, 03:33 PM

For #3 what if you have Adaptive 'on' but at a very low sensitivity?
I think I've done just about everything with adaptive 'on' with at the very lowest value of the .01 (default) sensitivity with no issues. You could try .005 or .001.
With much larger values it was faster but also had brutal, chunky dissipation-but thats it. And always circumstantial. But I never really had any 'scale' issues...not sure what you mean there in relation to adaptive being 'on' or not?

By that, I just mean if the checkbox for "Adaptive" is checked or not in the UI.

aqua9

06 June 2011, 07:23 PM

an update of explosion

http://www.vimeo.com/25778865

thanx :)

chrispy2001

06 June 2011, 11:48 PM

I've rendered out fire passes and my comp guys need (i repeat REALLY need) the colors not to be clamped. I've checked the Non-Clamped Color check box in the fushionworks renderer options but my colors are still getting clamped.

I'm rendering out 32bit open exrs

As far as I can tell scanline only does 8 bit images therefore clamping the colors. Is this correct?

Is there anyway to render out fumefx fire with floating point colors?

depleteD

07 July 2011, 12:01 AM

This is a problem that plauges so many people.

Try under render elements. There should be a fumefx non clamped color exr

chrispy2001

07 July 2011, 12:33 AM

So I change the renderer to mental ray, force 32bit and i get floating point color. Also you have to check off Use Autovolume on the mental ray, ray tracing tab (as per the documentation)

My comp guys will let me live another day...

chrispy2001

07 July 2011, 12:44 AM

Does anyone know if it is possible to combine the FusionWorks Renderer Fire/Smoke/Velocity/Depth ect. passes into the one open exr image file?

mtoma

07 July 2011, 11:46 AM

Hi,

Anybody know how to render z depth of a smoke? and a pass of the smoke ?

thanks!

sorry for my english

kogden

07 July 2011, 04:28 PM

I have a feeling that you'll need to get your hands on the connection extension for max to do this.... or the plugin for the OpenEXR translator so you can specify the elements you wish to embed in the EXR.... I'm on 2010, so I'm not sure if it ships with the product by default now....

If you have the updated OpenEXR translator, this tut will cover how to embed them :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BchAiE041o

Hope you have some luck :)

Kieran

THarland

07 July 2011, 10:24 PM

@chrispy2001- Select the render elements then add them in the OpenEXR configuration menu.

@depleteD- I don't see a fumefx non clamped color exr. Are you referring to the Non-Clamped color G-Buffer channel in the exr setup menu?

kogden

07 July 2011, 08:15 AM

In the fusion works renderer it needs to be turned on there and it also needs to be added with in the exr options, basically the same as the velocity chaneel to be rendered as an element :)

THarland

07 July 2011, 12:18 AM

Derp...
Lol, never noticed it there before.
If it was a snake it would have bitten me!
:beer:

depleteD

07 July 2011, 12:50 AM

Yea man it drives me nutz. You have to click like 3 -4 things and KNOW where this shit is to get something so essentail.

-Andrew

kogden

07 July 2011, 02:22 PM

This is super hacky, and doesn't really do much error checking... but it could be useful to get some fume render stuff a chunk there :)

What is does:
Sets Fusion Renderer to have velocity and un-clamped color checked on
Adds FumeFX elements (fire, smoke, velocity, z-depth)
adds the unclaped color to be embedded in the exr
Should Force the render elements to also be embedded.
Sets the exr compression to store for appropriate use with NUKE (zip compression, scanline storage, and region save)

Also NOTE! This most likely WON'T work if you don't have the connection extension for max.... i tested it in max 2010

Hey guys heres an update on the fire, still working on shadows, i dont know how to soften them any help would be appreciated :)

http://www.vimeo.com/25930313

Thanx :)

aqua9

07 July 2011, 09:24 AM

an update with shadows
and I need some help with the color correction any suggestions ??
http://www.vimeo.com/26049816

thanx

depleteD

07 July 2011, 12:41 AM

Here are some notes,

SCENE

Your scene match is off, perspective of the ball traveling and bouncing is off.

ANIMATION
The animation of the ball is completely off. Go out side and throw a basket ball and film it for refrence. Your fire ball looks like it belongs on the moon.

SIMULATION

Look at refrence and check out how fast fire moves. Fire probably moves 5-6 times faster than what you ahve. Your fire is moving like dry ice vapor which blows the scale.

Lighting
Your fire isn't lighting the pavement, that is super weird. You have fire that isnt emitting light.

If you cant get a GI out of your renderer, parent a omni light to your sphere and add a noise controller to the light multiplier to flicer it.

Split the different with the shadows in v3 and v2,

COMP
add a bright hot spot in comp to the ball, give it a bright center, some punch, a bit of a lens flare.

POLISH
On the imapct of the ball emit some sparks. Or leave a decal on the pavement. Put an additional visual cue to show that the ball hit the ground.

-Andrew

aqua9

07 July 2011, 09:20 AM

Here are some notes,

SCENE

Your scene match is off, perspective of the ball traveling and bouncing is off.

ANIMATION
The animation of the ball is completely off. Go out side and throw a basket ball and film it for refrence. Your fire ball looks like it belongs on the moon.

SIMULATION

Look at refrence and check out how fast fire moves. Fire probably moves 5-6 times faster than what you ahve. Your fire is moving like dry ice vapor which blows the scale.

Lighting
Your fire isn't lighting the pavement, that is super weird. You have fire that isnt emitting light.

If you cant get a GI out of your renderer, parent a omni light to your sphere and add a noise controller to the light multiplier to flicer it.

Split the different with the shadows in v3 and v2,

COMP
add a bright hot spot in comp to the ball, give it a bright center, some punch, a bit of a lens flare.

POLISH
On the imapct of the ball emit some sparks. Or leave a decal on the pavement. Put an additional visual cue to show that the ball hit the ground.

-Andrew

Thanx for the detailed response and the tips to improve the work, will update with the changes very soon
thanx once again

depleteD

07 July 2011, 05:57 AM

np, looking forward to the update ;)

QuakeFX

07 July 2011, 09:06 PM

I just installed FumeFX 2.1 and I was just playing around with the smoke settings, trying to create a basic scene with shadows and stuff, and have the smoke interact with a few things. Here's the result:

http://www.youtube.com/embed/0vUVziSV7k0

I have a few question regarding my scene:

1. The smoke creates a really dense shadow, rendering the background completely black (I used an extra omni light to compensate a little). Is it possible to have thinner parts of the smoke let light through like in RL? It looks especially weird on the frame below (right side of the cubic object). This way the smoke's shadow has a very sharp edge. I'm opting for something like softshadows, but I'm not used to the scanline renderer as I'm trying to use mental ray with ambient occlusion as my default.

2. The resolution of my grid is at only 300x300x400 and adaptive turned on (using only half of the resolution most of the time). Still, the simulation of 100 frames took 2 hours on a 3.4Ghz 2500K cpu with 8GB of RAM. Is this normal, or aren't I using the settings in an efficient way?

3. My original goal was to have the smoke pour on the ground and stay there. I'm using only fuel and smoke. Selecting my FFX Simple Src and then setting the temperature to a negative value indeed makes my smoke drop, but it dissipated far too quick. I then went in the simulation tab and set the smoke dissipation minimum density and strength both to 0, but still no luck. :shrug:

4. I also find my smoke to have a lot of 'ripples' and I can't find any way to get rid of these.

1. The smoke creates a really dense shadow, rendering the background completely black (I used an extra omni light to compensate a little). Is it possible to have thinner parts of the smoke let light through like in RL? It looks especially weird on the frame below (right side of the cubic object). This way the smoke's shadow has a very sharp edge. I'm opting for something like softshadows, but I'm not used to the scanline renderer as I'm trying to use mental ray with ambient occlusion as my default.

Dont use mental ray. It adds a level of complications. Vray is your best bet, I think you could fake this with a shadow map and playing with the bias.

2. The resolution of my grid is at only 300x300x400 and adaptive turned on (using only half of the resolution most of the time). Still, the simulation of 100 frames took 2 hours on a 3.4Ghz 2500K cpu with 8GB of RAM. Is this normal, or aren't I using the settings in an efficient way?

that sounds good. 300x300x400 is pretty big.

3. My original goal was to have the smoke pour on the ground and stay there. I'm using only fuel and smoke. Selecting my FFX Simple Src and then setting the temperature to a negative value indeed makes my smoke drop, but it dissipated far too quick. I then went in the simulation tab and set the smoke dissipation minimum density and strength both to 0, but still no luck. :shrug:

Try pouring out ALOT of smoke and turning up the gravity. You could also add a gravity vector and invert it.

4. I also find my smoke to have a lot of 'ripples' and I can't find any way to get rid of these.

Adjust your turbulence settings. You can gain more natural turbulence by using another source adding opposite temp and randomizing velocity.

Good luck.

Glacierise

07 July 2011, 07:29 AM

There is much more control on the motion of smoke since FFX 2.1. You can use the smoke buoyancy parameter, which makes the smoke go up (or down, if negative) based on density. This is the one I use most with dense smokes - make it deep negative, and dense smoke really sinks nicely, leaving the softer areas behind. Of course, it has to be balanced up with the temperature buoyancy, pushing it in the other direction. So either use little temp buoyancy, or don't put in much temp.

FabianB

07 July 2011, 07:47 PM

Hey guys, what's up?
I was pretty busy lately, so I thought it would be cool to post some new stuff.
Here is a FumeFx Missile Hit I did in my lunchbreak, the sim of the explosion took around 10 minutes.
http://www.vimeo.com/26544895

Here is the file (without the trail),:
[/url]http://www.fumefx-training.com/training/Missile_Hit_Fabian_Max2010_sample.zip (http://www.fumefx-training.com/training/Missile_Hit_Fabian_Max2012_sample.zip)

Thanks Hristo! Yeah, I think it would have helped to chop off some frames in the beginning and add a camera shake, but it's straight out of max with some glow added in AE. My lunch break isn't long enough for multipass rendering. :)

Benjamin: I will try to add a 2010/2011 file tomorrow.

Btw here is a still frame without the glow (so you know what to expect from the scenefile) :):

Glacierise

07 July 2011, 08:41 PM

I've become nitpicky :D Cheers :)

FabianB

07 July 2011, 08:46 PM

I've become nitpicky :D Cheers :)

Haha, no you are not. I'm always happy about crticical comments so I can make it better next time. cheers. :)

thankl you fabian. do you share the file with the missile trail? maybee trail only?

do you plan a training dvd in the futere? if you do this i buy it. ^^

QuakeFX

07 July 2011, 03:21 PM

That's one sweet looking explosion. :)

joconnell

07 July 2011, 12:59 PM

Still not on to fire properly yet and explosions after that, so biggish smoke for the minute. Simple source and two noise maps for this one. http://vimeo.com/26621928

Loads of bits like this for a test thing over the next while, hopefully with some good backup!

depleteD

07 July 2011, 10:01 PM

Fabian,

You have some really cool stuff in that explosion. But the timing needs work. Explosions are like instantly big and then grow pretty slowly. I think it would help if you animate some values. Like timescale heat production and expansion.

This would really help give it some impact.

-Andrew

depleteD

07 July 2011, 10:02 PM

joconnel,

Thats pretty cool. You acchieve a nice boiling motion in the smoke. You might want to put something in your scene like buildings or people to give it some scale.

QuakeFX

07 July 2011, 11:52 AM

joconnell, how do you get the smoke to last that long? My smoke always dissipates rather quickly, unable to form giant clouds like yours.

FabianB

07 July 2011, 12:05 PM

Thanks for the feedback guys, that helps a lot. Thanks Andrew, yeah if I had known that so many people download the scenefile I had definitely worked on the timing a little more. :) I know it's not perfect, I think it would already help to chop some frames off in the beginning.
John that smoke looks great! Good job!
@QuakeFx: There are a few ways to make the smoke last longer, the easiest way is to just emit more smoke in the first place. You could also bring dissipation strength or dissipation threshold down.

Glacierise

07 July 2011, 12:42 PM

Kickass sim John!

joconnell

07 July 2011, 01:22 PM

Cheers Hristo, lots to talk about ;)

Quake I'm ripping off Jeff lim on vimeo that's ripping off Brandon Young's large smoke sims. It's a 5 metre simple source with fire set to emit smoke, and the fire turned off to render so you on;y see the smoke. In the fire creates smoke section, the density of the smoke is set to about 2 which keeps it very hard looking and stops it from fading away quickly. There's two noise maps in it, both of which have their low and high values set so that they look nearly black and white - one in the fuel which has quite a small size so you gets loads of black and white spots over the surface of your emitter. The second one in the temperature is much bigger - you might only get 2 "blobs" in the noise map spread out over the surface of your emitter. Jeff lim had a good tip which was to test the first 3 frames of your sim with one procedural map only put into the fuel section of your emitter. You sim the first 3 frames and you can tell exactly the size of detail that's coming out of it. So put in your emitter, put your small map into the fuel slot, sim it until you're getting very small "bubbles" or lumps appearing immediately on the surface of your smoke - that's your small detail. Then copy the map, make the size of it anything between 5 and 10 times bigger in size and stick that into the temperature slot with animated phase to give you all the big variations in cloud size - all of the "belches".

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